There is quite an active dark music scene in Italy. Most Italian releases I hear are stylistically either gothic rock, medieval or death industrial in style. Asylum though, founded in 1999 in Naples, offers us something different with this self-released demo cd, their third one. It features a mixture of industrial, technoid elements and ebm amongst others.
The first track ‘Barbie Trip’, more of an intro, is a short piece of industrial noise. But then follows ‘Everybody’s dead’, which combines a spacious electronic ambient layer with a powerful technoid ebm beat and some unrecognizable distorted vocals. Quite a nice atmosphere. The third track, ‘The end of show’ (again a happy title) and ‘Ploratus’, are repetitive rhythmic industrial tracks, not very exciting though. This changes on ‘Lesbo sado dance’, which is sheer power, a merciless beat reminding of the hardest gabber. ‘Dead Stars’ Light’ is a very sad soundscape. What comes next is the happy synthpop tune ‘Human model’, which is mixed with hard chaotic beats. A few more songs follow, each with a different style and mood. The cd is closed with a weird ‘industrial version’ of ‘The Model’. There certainly is a lot of variation on this album, but I’m not entirely convinced by Asylum yet. There are not enough really good songs on this demo, and they don’t manage to create their own style yet, there is bit of everything and more here.
Note: the band recently changed its name to ‘Porno Machine’…
