"Party Music For Graveyards" is the long-awaited new album by Milan's Bloody Mary. The band is devoted to an interesting gothic rock, influenced as much by the work of sacred monsters such as Fields of The Nephilim and The Cult as by the new wave of the eighties, all of it heightened by Tim Burton-like atmospheres and enriched by Aldebran's dark voice.
This album, their second, out on Valery Records, has the merit of being a pleasant listen from start to finish, never letting the listener's tension and interest drop, thanks to dynamic songs with an imposing sound that is refined and catchy at the same time.
It is hard to pick the best compositions, since the whole work is of excellent quality; certainly the opening, intriguing "Velvet", a song already known to those who have had the pleasure of seeing the band live, is one of the most successful, as is the cry of pain of the mad scientist Aldebran di Alteg, the vocalist's alter ego, in "Somebody To Love", in which he pours out all his grief over the loss of his beloved.
The following "Before You Fade" also best represents what the five-piece has to offer: a song with a strong musicality and a chorus straight out of the eighties, with everything it takes to fill dance floors around half the world.
There is also room for a highly respectable cover, the legendary Ramones' "Pet Sematary", redone here according to the band's own musical canons. The following "The Right Way" is another successful song, starting softly, almost in a whisper, but growing in intensity as the listen goes on and flowing into a composition with an unstoppable chorus that will surely catch on at the band's next gigs. "Deathly Gone" is a song with a more dramatic gait, almost representing the scientist's awareness that none of his experiments will ever manage to recreate the likeness of his lost beloved.
In conclusion, there is a great deal of energy and desire to emerge in the twelve tracks of this "Party Music For Graveyards", and everything is looked after down to the smallest detail, starting from the splendid cover image, so it would truly be a shame to let a work of this calibre slip by, above all because it comes from an Italian band that, for once, has nothing at all to envy its colleagues from beyond the Alps!
First published in Italian; in English here. Where it appeared ↗