Dopoguerra

For their ambitious debut album Dopoguerra, Italy's improbably named KLIMT 1918 courageously experiment with influences as diverse as new wave, gothic rock and heavy metal, but often do so in such obviously derivative a manner that it's almost impossible to ignore. For starters, opening tune "They Were Wed by the Seas" and its attendant ambient-organ-and-spoken-news-wire intro comprise a blatant reinterpretation of U2's "Where the Streets Have No Name," if ever there was one. Likewise, it doesn't take an obsessive music geek to identify the Cure's little-boy vocals and serpentine basslines pervading "Rachel" and the title track, much less glimpse the panoramic arrangements of "Talk Talk" underpinning "La Tregua," or even suss out the more surprising and surreptitious insertion of genuine speed metal guitar picking and double bass drum work into "Lomo." But as these seemingly disparate parts start coming together to form a more complete picture (much, one would presume, like a painting by the artist whose name and year of death combine into the group's strange moniker), one can't help but feel increasingly, almost helplessly, seduced by Dopoguerra's totality of experience. The conspicuously borrowed elements from past artists continue to crop up unabated, as the band plows through the irresistible, semi-industrial darkwave gothics of "Snow of 85" and "Nightdriver" (think Anathema by way of Ultravox), pauses briefly for a Police-like breakdown inside "Because of You. Tonight," and finally turn up the metallic volume and requisite minor chords for evocative closer "Sleepwalk in Rome." But KLIMT 1918's success at re-envisioning their source material (and doing so within a progressive rock-approved concept album framework that draws lyrical inspiration from post-WWII Italy -- dopo guerra means "after the war" -- and its neo-realistic cinema, one might add) ultimately wins the day. In effect, theirs is the sort of musical mission impossible -- contrasting acts of bald-faced devotion to their heroes with the pretentiousness to rip them off red-handed -- that virtually demands unbelievers forgo their most basic instincts, and take a considerable leap of faith into the unknown. Only to find, once there, that, in retrospect, the leap was effortless and rewarding. With all that in mind, KLIMT 1918's potential as harbingers of a new religion disguised as the unlikeliest of prophets becomes all the more intriguing. ~ Eduardo Rivadavia