Review by Vladimir on January 18, 2024.

Okay, I guess this journey should be interesting, at least from my standpoint. Why am I saying this, you may wonder? Well, if the cover art doesn't speak for itself, then perhaps the music would. Join me, as I take a look at the Italian black metal band Vacua from Rome, with their self-titled EP released on December 28th, 2023.

The EP starts with the opening track 'Succube Del Fuoco', which has some very slow riffing consisted of open string chords, slow tempo drumming and harsh vocals. The song would later change tempo on the second half into faster riffing and drumming, and thus it would begin switching back and forth between faster and slower tempo, with a brief instance of blast beat and tremolo riffing that switches back to what it was beforehand. The second track 'Falce Dei Reietti' leans more towards a faster tempo than the previous one with frequent blast beating drums, while still finding some spots to throw in the slower sections, and this time it feels like it was much more oriented to a Mgła styled approach. The other two songs also have their defining moments, with 'Squarci Del Silenzio' giving some mid-tempo stuff, while 'Mitis Terra' is a dark ambient track with sound of footsteps on grass, background drumming and some sort of eerie 8-bit synth sound.

The songwriting is for the most part very repetitive and often inconsistent, as if the riffs were just thrown around without there being any thought put into the creative process. I am usually fine with repetitive songwriting, some artists managed to get away with that or have at least conveyed some atmosphere with it, however here it feels so lackluster and uninspiring with a very amateur approach that just doesn't convey any feeling or atmosphere whatsoever. The songs often feel like they are going around in circles rather than having any flow or progression, going back and forth between parts before coming to its conclusion. The cover for this EP is, to simply put it, highly perplexing and just hard to wrap my mind around. From what I managed to get, the art depicts a naked woman petting a wild cat, all the while being watched by the molester moon in the sky. Stylistically, it looks like some unusual hybrid of Joy Division's "Unknown Pleasures" and the bizarre, naïve art-style by Chris (Simpsons Artist), but you just can't convince me that this doesn't look like you would draw under a heavy influence of halogenic mushrooms or even acid. The sound production is also rather poor and just dry, and it sounds like it was recorded with the cheapest recording equipment, possibly in a rehearsal studio.

This was a rather poor and unexciting experience which could have been interesting to some extent, because I decided to give it a chance despite its ugly cover art because books shouldn't always be judged by their covers, however in this case I probably should have. I don't know what the band was trying to achieve for the most part, but it looks like they were trying to combine some elements of raw atmospheric black metal with post-black metal and DSBM, however you can't even see or feel the effectiveness of their work. Personally, I would not recommend this to anyone, but feel free to do so if your mind desires.

Rating: 1 out of 10