Horror Vacui
Shadows Sanctuary
Artoffact Records
The layoff taken by Italian goth rock vets Horror Vacui since their last record has resulted in a new label and some line-up shuffling, but if you’ve tracked the path they’ve walked since their 2012 debut it won’t surprise you to learn that those aren’t the only things new to Shadows Sanctuary. A good ways removed from the crust influenced deathrock of In Darkness You Will Feel Alright, their fifth LP is a more integrated yet less showy affair than anything they’ve yet attempted.
They might not be immediately apparent, but subtler moves like the harmonic colour on the chorus of opener “Dispossed” playing off the tight but sparse post-punk rhythm of the verse are more reflective of Shadows‘ priorities, and indeed, the slow winnowing away of the band’s punk roots and the uptick in more spidery and moody pure goth rock feels like it’s finally reached its apotheosis with this record. Oddly, that shift doesn’t yield more of the ascendant anthems (a la “Consolation Prize”) or compositional experiments (“Unreachable”) that the preceding LP Living For Nothing hinted at as their future. Instead, it’s more measured and reflective fare, like the lilting roll of “Eventide”, which is representative of Shadows Sanctuary.
Even in the LP’s most raucous moments, like the scaling leads of “A Sunny Day” which slide overtop a dead simple thumping beat, the band sounds more akin to the theatrical excess of 90s acts like Corpus Delicti than any deathrock forbearer you’d care to name. Similarly, the instrumentation and arrangement of “Midnight” are simple enough, but it ends up having a plaintive if not downright romantic cast. “Skyless Eyes” is plenty propulsive, but the focus stays on atmosphere rather than aggression.
It’s tempting to speculate as to the reasons behind this shift in Horror Vacui’s sound during their break – previous guitarist Marzia shifting to the drumkit, the arrival of new guitarist Vasu, the pandemic, the irresistible drift towards “mature” records – but again, a general sense of drift between dark rock subgenres has been part and parcel of the band for a while. They’ve long used the motto “punker than dark, darker than punk” to express this ambiguity, and while it still holds in theory on Shadows Sanctuary, the record does find one half of that dichotomy eclipsing the other.
