[reviews] afe122cd
scum from the sun: scum from the sun

Rich metal box a la P.I.L. for this new release on Afe, the band formerly know as Scum has been active for a while right now. This debut four tracks release is deeply immersed in the dark-ambient, post industrial genre, the sound is overall OK and I think the mastering of Giuseppe Ielasi helped a lot.

For what concerns instruments here we've bass, guitars, synth, electronic-drum machines, keyboards and I guess laptops. I'm not the greatest fan of the sci-fi keyboard sound they've been using here and there, but the whole work sounds quite sincere, maybe still a bit rough, perhaps naïve but quite honest.

You've many martial rhythms and bass-lines have that dark wave feel many goth friends out there will probably appreciate. Even thought the electronic cut is considerably different from many german bands, if I didn't know they were Italians I would localize them in Deutschland, or at least let's say the aesthetic/rhythmic approach gave me this impression.

No vocals and some quasi-post rock hints (like in "Caput Corvi") due to the guitar and bass solutions, but the matter is still quite uniform mainly for the first two tracks. The harped synth opening the third track has a strong late-eighties/early-nineties electronic feel the most nostalgic of us might appreciate.

Sometimes the whole work sounds just a little bit dogmatic, but I think time will tell if they'll manage to shape like clay molded by the hand of a good craftsman.

[Andrea Ferraris]