ANNO ZERO is the new album by Milan gothic rock band BLOODY MARY who, after "Blood'n'Roll" (2006) and "Party Music For Graveyards" (2010), reach the third act of the saga with a fine record true to the spirit of the group, one that completes the path towards maturity taken over the years.
ANNO ZERO holds ten atmospheric tracks in which, in a goth & dark atmosphere, one virtually lives the last days before the nuclear apocalypse; the songs, not always immediate but certainly intense and determined, recall old electronic sounds ("I keep pretending" and "Chase the nowhere") and add something new and more impetuous to the whole ("Frozen" and "Crawling"). Aldebran's voice is an added value to be reckoned with: his imprint is decisive for the success of the record, and his timbre gives depth to every different situation.
"Concrete Jungle", fast and fascinating, recalls an experimental German electropop à la Kraftwerk, while the ballad "So far away" lays bare its suffering and gives off an energy with nothing superficial about it. "Did you let me down" grows from a classic rock intro, just as "Judith" recalls the '80s. The close, "I am gonna miss you", shows no sign of a drop; on the contrary, it confirms that Bloody Mary are the spokesmen of a gothic rock to be respected in Europe.
In short, this is a fine piece of work, for lovers of the genre but also for anyone who wants to discover something interesting and decidedly excellent: it is "a manifesto of the phantasmal survival of the ravings, dreams and nightmares of a twentieth century shelved too hastily and (badly) digested".
First published in Italian; in English here. Where it appeared ↗