Track By Tracks: Visionoir - The Second Coming (2021)

1. Lost In A Maze:

“Lost in a Maze” is the first single from the album, a proper introduction to the album sound, closer to prog-metal than to avant-garde. Moving from clean to harsh vocals, this is the first ever recording featuring Fabio Vogrig on vocals.

2. The Snooping Shadow:

”The Snooping Shadow” contains some of the most avant-garde material of the album. It has been a very difficult writing process, based mostly of unordered hexatonic scales, a step into dodecaphony not usual for me, but very intriguing. 

3. The Vulture Eye:

”The Vulture Eye” is the doomiest and slowest track of the album: I just love doom, it’s in my DNA since ever although I find most doom records boring because many bands simply cannot change “gear”. Lyrics are based on the Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The Tell-Tale Heart” and they fit really well with the dark side of my music thanks to the theatrical performance of Alessandro Seravalle. 

4. Breathless:

”Breathless”, at this point, represents the apex of heaviness in this album, with the most ‘djenty’ sound my guitars can be (not much, really). Originally this was a pretty regular and mostly acoustic track: it’s been sleeping in the closet for almost a decade when I finally decided to change it drastically and for the better.

5. Horror Vacui:

After this poker of killers I thought one would need some rest so I went for an instrumental break with “Horror Vacui”: in previous Visionoir records these instrumentals were sort of my signature, shorter and Goblinesque synth-based pieces with a 70’s flavour. Well, I did it again: luckily this time I threw in the magic sax of Clarissa Durizzotto and that made the difference. I hope to use it in the future as a soundtrack for a short film if I find the right material.

6. They Speak By Silences:

“They Speak by Silences”…wait, piano? Hell yes, my first demo was deeply rooted in gothic-metal as I was musically born in the Century Media 90’s golden age ( Tiamat, the Gathering, Moonspell, Samael…). From this song on I’m back to a solution started in my debut album “The Waving Flame of Oblivion”, bringing life to instrumental tracks by incorporating voices form archive recording, in this case the poem “The Hound of Heaven” by Francis Thompson.

7. No More:

“No More” is the final contribution by Alessandro Seravalle on this album: it’s a “remake” of a Garden Wall (his band) piece that I am profoundly connected to. I find the main riff one of the best ever written and I wanted to make it shine again with the original author’s own voice singing.

8. Born Like This:

Yes, it’s him ! It’s Charles Bukowski’s voice you can here on “Born Like This”. This may be the more straight and upbeat piece of the lot, but synths get proggier and proggier in the second half.

9. Silent Sea:

“Silent Sea” should have been called ”The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”, but I didn’t want to mess with Iron Maiden. Obviously it’s based on the eponymous poem by Samuel T. Coleridge and has been sitting for long in my drawer…I recorded a first version of this ten years ago, but somehow lost the drums tracks so I finally got the chance to get back to it this time.

10. The Second Coming:

A short and atmospheric finale for the album was necessary to salute the listeners with some words of wisdom from the great poet Yeats. These lines have also helped me with the concept, title and artwork of the whole album. Basically, the poem predicts that time is up for humanity, and that civilization as we know it is about to be undone. On this little piece also appears for the second time the magic sax of Clarissa. Given her incredible talent I hope to add in my music a massive presence of sax in the future.