http://www.muzikablog.com/music-review/canaan-contro-luce-album-review/
Its winter, a season associated with cold and dark weather. Therefore it is the right time to change into a thoughtful soul. While outside it is raining like cats and dogs, and the temperature is below zero, I find myself sitting next to the fireplace, covered by a rug, sipping some scotch and travelling through a new intense musical journey. This transcending journey is lead by the new album Contro.luce, Canaans 6th studio album.
Canaan, the Italian band known as Dark Masters, never let any fans down. From their first album, Blue Fire, released on December of 1996, till their latest release, Contro.luce, released in December 2010 one can notice a very diverse discography. Still, their music always had the same feel, dark, touching and inspiring. Like any other previous Canaan albums, Contro.luce, is an unexpected refined surprise. Expect the unexpected more than ever before, the six years of waiting paid off big time.
The album, which runs in over seventy minutes, features twenty one new songs. This is Canaans finest work of art; most mature and probably will silent all the previous albums thanks to its completeness. Unless in a couple of years Canaan release another album, I cannot even start to imagine how Canaan can come up with something more iconic than Contro.luce. Half of the songs are ambient interludes, with most of them featuring ethnic instruments and dark ambience electronic noises, generating a perfect harmony and acting as a switch over between the rest of the urbane songs.
Another unexpected; all the lyrics are in Italian, which in a way fit much better in such dark and atmospheric music. Mauros vocals are impeccable which sublime the whole package. Italian was always one of the best, if not the best language for such kind of literature. Unlike the early lyrics, in this album the lyrics are more direct, and articulate every days life themes, mainly failure, loss, regret, pain and also joy.
The rest of the songs, feature both clean guitar melodies and distorted riffs, and irregular drums. Still they are able to transmit a much darker and frozen feel than the ambient like interludes. Most of the songs emit melancholic fever, an effect created by the trailing keyboards and random atmospheric sounds. As always, and was eagerly waiting for it, in some of these songs there are the unique Canaan instrumental parts where the drums transudes into a faster rhythm, and the lead guitar speaks to you like no other vocalist can, taking you on a high before you are gently floating back down to mother earth like a loose feather, thanks to the dissolving of such moments into the rest of the song.
After going strong for fifteen years, Canaan are one of the few bands who released a number of albums containing different genres of music, yet never letting anyone down, and most importantly of all, never distancing themselves from reality and darkness.
Quando il mondo si ferma a respirare laria pura della sera
Robert Abela