Omerta is the latest album from Misanthropia, and when I clocked the description of their genre (symphonic black/death metal), I had high hopes – especially as I’ve recently been listening to a lot of material by their fellow countrymen Carach Angren. However, it wasn’t quite as exciting as I’d have hoped.
The introductory track, Morte dei capi, doesn’t do the album any favours, especially when coupled with the album art – it feels like you’ve stepped into a cut scene in a low-budget detective video game, and I almost thought I needed to strap myself in for eight more tracks of Detective Metal™. Thankfully, that wasn’t the case, but it does give the listener an odd first impression of the album because it just doesn’t fit in with everything else on the piece.
Omerta isn’t bad, but on the other hand it isn’t exactly great either. It’s decent enough, but it’s nothing groundbreaking and you’ll find nothing new here. The symphonic elements on the album are rather strong – the middle section in third track 230 Park Avenue is superb, for example – but it would definitely benefit from being a little more symphonically driven as Omerta is a little lacking in melody at times. The heavier parts of their sound have a decent amount of bite to them, but they would be more impactful if there was more melody to contrast with. Sixth track The Executioner has a great symphonic section with clean vocals that really stands out, but it’s over too quickly before being replaced by a wall of noise, and it’s a shame because the clean vocals in particular could have been utilised a lot more over the course of the album.
All in all, Omerta is certainly a listenable album – but Misanthropia would definitely benefit from a more adventurous approach with future material.
6/10
