Italian band BLACK HOLE was, as I understand it, a band mainly active in the 1980’s and by now long disbanded. They only managed to release one album while active, 1985’s “Land of Mystery”, a production hailed by many as an overlooked doom metal classic. The band did record a second album, but I understand they disbanded before they were able to release it. Italian label Andromeda released a small limited run of this album in 2000, naming the CD “Living Mask”. As this production became just about impossible to get hold of as the years went by, Italian label Jolly Rogers Records decided to reissue this production in 2014.
While Black Hole is primarily known as a doom metal band, this second album of theirs isn’t really a production that can be placed within such a context. They do use the occasional doom metal oriented riffs aye, and on the song The Dark Theatre we are treated to a recurring sequence driven by archetypical classic Black Sabbath riffs too, but this is a production that appears to revolve around very different tendencies altogether.
What just about all these compositions explore are atmospheric escapades of a fairly adventurous approach, where odd rhythms, various kinds of psychedelic guitar details, Gothic organ and ghostly, cosmic laced keyboard textures and synthesizer motifs are brought together in otherworldly constellations, with monotone, chant-like druggy lead vocals applied here and there. The songs comes across as almost hodgepodge amateur constructions at times, mainly due to all the odd choices in terms of creating and developing arrangements that range from the weird and eerie to the outright odd sounding ones. Those who know their Lovecraft well will recall the story about Erich Zann, playing his fiddle to keep the forces of otherworldly evil at bay. If said forces came with a soundtrack, the ghostly, sickly sounding escapades of Black Hole on “Living Mask” would fulfill such a role quite nicely I suspect.
Just how good, or not, this album actually is remains clouded in mystery though, at least as far as I’m concerned. This is due to the rather horrible sound quality of it. Some albums have been described as closed in over the years, sounding like they were taped in the living room while the band was playing in the cellar. This can applied to this album as well, but the cellar in this case is one belonging to one of your more distant neighbors. Closed in, dark and muddy to the point of having porridge like qualities. Music that sounds like it has been filtered through dirt, gravel and earth before applied to a recording device.
While mix and production is a major issue with this album, the music itself is an almost just a major one. This is an album made for and appealing to a fairly niche and limited audience as I experience it. Hammer horror movie buffs with a taste for doom metal and occult music may want to check this one out, dedicated Lovecraft fans with a deep affection for everything odd, weird and ghastly with an affection for bleak, dark music and Gothic atmospheres another possibility. An album to be approached with some caution, but one that I suspect will be highly regarded and deeply appreciated by a small, dedicated audience with a fascination for music of such a ghostly, bleak and closed in nature.
My rating: 50/100
