Your Tomorrow Alone – Ordinary Lives

Today we have Italian progressive gothic doom band Your Tomorrow Alone and their debut record for My Kingdom Music, “Ordinary Lives.” Their bio sheet lists influences such as Paradise Lost, Anathema and My Dying Bride as well as 70s prog rock. What say we spin this one up and see what it is about?

If the name of the band, Your Tomorrow Alone, is not enough to set a gloomy atmosphere, the music on “Ordinary Lives” will slowly start leeching happiness from the room. I would not label the music as depressing; that would be too blunt. Rather, the music's pace and the wistfulness it conveys begin to drag you down slowly. Imagine treading water in the ocean. If someone handed you an anvil, you would sink immediately, but in the case of “Ordinary Lives” it is the added weight of your own sodden clothing that will eventually drag you under the waves.

The vocals come in two flavors – clean and harsh. Eugenio Mucio provides the harsh vocals, and the clean, haunting vocals are Giovanni Sorgente. I usually prefer my doom metal to have only clean vocals, but having both on this album, particularly when they are both singing at once, is pretty killer. The keyboards of course add loads of atmosphere to the album, as well as supplementing the vocals.

I am an avid fan of doom metal, so I am rather predisposed to liking this album. I enjoy it, but my one minor issue is that it feels scattered or directionless sometimes. Rather than moving in a straight line towards the destination it walks around in circles a few times before getting going the right way. This does not detract too much from my enjoyment of the album, but it is something that I noticed. If they tighten up the structure a little bit next time around, (without losing the atmospheric feel) they will be even better. Check out their Facebook and MySpace pages to give them a listen.