Solitvdo are an Italian one-man act which I hadn’t heard of before. Apparently there was one single demo before, and Immerso In Un Bosco Di Querce is the first full recording. The material was released on tape in September 2014 via Eremita Produzioni, and on CD (digipack) in December 2014 via Naturmacht Productions. And for sure this material fits to the label’s roster, known for integrity and introspection, nature and purity, translated into a black-edged aural square.
Immerso In Un Bosco Di Querce opens with a shorter introduction, Alba…, which actually is quite a bombastic symphonic-operatic piece with a certain neo-classical atmosphere. Yeah, undersigned is happy…
And it is a fitting intro to the album, for Immerso In Un Bosco Di Querce stands for a somewhat melancholic and melodious form of Atmospheric Black Metal. Striking as from the very beginning are the pronounced bass lines at the one hand, and the chilly, somewhat raspy scream-grunts at the other, yet most characterizing for Solitvdo might be the profoundly-present guitar leads, which add a non-deniable touch of Shoegaze, or let’s call it Blackgaze (not that unusual anymore). Also the violin lines and some Post Rock-alike elements show a diverse side, typifying this band in contradiction to the grey masses we have to deal with lately. And there’s more: epic outbursts with inclusion of heroic shouting (…Rivolta!), classic soloing, cinematic orchestrations, gothic emotives (without dwelling into fake-emotive nonsense!), acoustic excerpts, folkish passages (like the track Altvm Silentivm), and so much more.
The main tempo is dwelling in between slow and mid-tempo, with almost no remarkable speed-up outbursts at all (though the fast-paced pieces in Nella Solitudine Il Divino, for example, are rather powerful), but seen the core of this kind of stuff, it isn’t but correct. It does not mean that this album is weak, soft or pathetic, because the connoisseurs of this sub-genre will recognize the superb song writing and excellent performance. This isn’t another headbang-explosion, yet an integer dreamlike experience with at least as much intension and power as many fast-paced colleagues. But you are surely aware of that.