Review: SOULS OF DIOTIMA “What Remains of the Day” (2012)

Artist – Souls of Diotima
Album – What Remains of the Day
Year – 2012

1- Intro
2- Pandora
3- The Battle of Marduk and Thiamat
4- Von Braun
5- Children of the king
6- The flight of Sandy
7- Rising Soul
8- What remains of the day
9- Endless sky
10- Secular comedy
11- Von Braun (Bonus track)

In 2004, a small project started which would eventually find its meaning and place on the musical world in 2009. Going from strength to strength over time, ‘What remains of the day’ is their latest addition to force that is “Souls of Diotima”.

The 11 track album which is set to be released mid-2012 combines the use of a full Symphonic Orchestra to enhance not just the sound but the overall experience of the music too.

‘What remains of the day’ is in sense a Progressive Symphonic album with many features and techniques happening all at the same time. The mix of English and Italian vocals expressed by vocalist ‘Barsi’ has opened up this album beyond limitations and this combined with the death metal growls powers its way through the path of the unknown. The solo guitars display great understand of not just ‘Neo-Classical’ shredding, but total understand of Blues and metal phrasing at its best. Heavily influenced licks such as those of Y. Malmsteen, J. Becker, and R. Marcello are frequently heard among the passages not only in the guitars but the keyboards as well. The great use of a full symphonic orchestra at their disposal has created atmospheric elements and textures to the overall sound of each track including the ‘Intro’ and ‘Von Braun’ which on the bonus track is quite simply exquisite to hear.

The album is screaming with influences with the likes of Epica, Nightwish, Within Temptation, Lacuna Coil, Malmsteen etc… Yet the overall production seems to be lost behind the feeling of muddiness in the vocals. The ‘Von Braun’ bonus track (track 11) is amazing in every sense of the word as it features the home language of the vocalist which if had been applied to the rest of the tracks would have made this album so much clearer to hear. It would seem that the vocals are much better suited to the home language for this album, and that the vocals were originally written in Italian before being transcribed into English for whatever reasons. In my opinion, I would love to hear the rest of the album in Italian because if track 11 is anything to go by, then the rest would be amazing!

A very good album; well worth a listen. I look forward to seeing these live some day.

7/10

Reviewed by Dylan Raine