Review: –

Let’s set the scene: you’re visiting a friend who has invited you over for dinner. You sit at a long dining room table, laden with delicious food and it all smells amazing. Nearest to you is a bowl of mashed potato, you take some, it’s really good. You go to reach for something else, only to be stopped by your host; “have you tried the mashed potato?” they gesture, piling yet more onto your plate. The same happens when you reach for something else and by the time the evening is over you’re left full of mashed potato and deeply dissatisfied because you didn’t try anything else. This is the perfect analogy for Italian post rock trio Angela Martyr. Morgan Bellini of goth-duo Vanessa Van Basten spearheads this project he describes as “grungy, mechanical, pessimistic metalgaze”. Bellini’s vocals are droning, pessimistic and not dissimilar to those of Kurt Cobain and Layne Staley. The problem is, they are overused – want to hear the guitar? Here are Morgan’s vocals instead. How about some percussion? Let’s croon this particular note one octave higher. By the time the record is over and done with it’s impossible to remember what the instrumentals actually sound like. Not a terrible release by any means, but the vocals definitely need to be lower in the mix next time.