Kemic-Al - The Dark Journal

DeathPosture, May 16, 2006

One story, fourteen chapters…

With his debut album Twisted Parameters, Maltese multi-talent Aldo Lombardi, made an impressive entry into the darker realms of the psytrance scene. That album still ranks very high in my personal chart of best artist albums of 2005 and I’m still amazed by its diversity, stamina and staying power. So naturally I’ve been eagerly awaiting the follow-up and the internet hype surrounding the album was also in a league not often seen with a ‘darkpsy’ album.

Aldo wanted to try something new this time, and for almost 20 years he had to idea to create an album that was much more a continuous story with chapters, as opposed to an album filled with individual tracks. The theme for this album, dubbed The Dark Journal, is the life and death of the notorious Vlad Dracula and his reign of terror in and around his native Romania in the fifteenth century. The booklet tells the true story of Dracula and each story represents a chapter in the story of his life – interpreted by Kemic-Al. I’m not gonna reproduce what people can read in the booklet, but I’ll try go express what I make of the individual chapters… They are meant to be digested as a whole, but to make it easier on the readers; I’ll use my usual track-by-track format. Let’s dig in!

Setting out to create a themed concept album with basically one album-long track, could easily have ended in pompous, pretentious, introvert garbage… But this is VERY far from that, this is actually a very, very special album. Very interesting, and refreshingly different! Anyone expecting Twisted Parameters Pt. 2 will be disappointed though. This album is much more mature – and in the same regard, it’s less easily accessible. Some of the tracks are indeed introvert and with the continued story concept, it’s not like you wanna skip tracks and enjoy them individually… This works MUCH better as one long story track. With that in mind, allow me to compare this with similar concept albums released in recent years. It’s not as amazing as Artifakt’s ground-breaking and diverse Artifakts II (Timecode 2005) but it’s even better than Megalopsy’s The Abstract Machine (Trishula 2005). But were milestone albums in their own right, and The Dark Journal finds it place steadily between them.

Musically this album doesn’t sway far away from the so-called darkpsy genre. The BPM is kept at a steady 148 throughout the album, but Kemic-Al still manages to keep the vast majority of the tracks interesting with all kinds of tweaks, twists and turns. Yes, there are a couple of dull moments, but they are scarce and as they are an integral part of the story they don’t bother me as much as they would on, say a compilation. Aldo also made the artwork and the impressive, informative booklet himself – as well as all the music + mastering and so on. How’s that for multi-talent folks? Very well done Aldo, you’ll have a hard time topping this album!

All in all, this album is a gem within the darker realms of psytrance. But, it’s not as easily accessible as most albums. It requires the listener to listen to all of it at once, and as a minimum a couple of repeated listens. Fans of melodic full-on and other purists will take a bit of convincing before they get this. But invest some time in this, and the reward will come back to you tenfold… This album is brilliant! …Enjoy!

Favourites: This is supposed to be enjoyed as a whole – like one long track. Chapters 1, 4, 7(!), 9(!) and 12 are particularly well-executed though…

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