The Spiritual Bat - Cruel Machine

It's been a year and a half since the Spiritual Bat released 'Cruel Machine' (Yes, I know, things take time on this site sometimes. Don't blame me; I'm just a writer.). But, it's finally taking its Tour de France through my ears, and the Italian duo known as The Spiritual Bats, for the most part, have me impressed with their Old School Goth sounds.

"Cruel Machine" kicks off the album, and it almost sounds like a witch session from the start; like the lead singer's either high (like a good kind of high) or just really getting ready for some sort of ritual. With the psychedelic sounds and guitar and drum work all compelling together, I could really see this being something that Charles Manson would listen to as he ordered one of his minions to kill someone else.

I'm finding a hard time pointing out more worthwhile songs. While I like the style and the talent found within the duet, I really just can't point out too many songs that I thoroughly enjoy. Most of the songs I can easily skip through without feeling too guilty.

I mean, I can certainly point out some of the bad parts, such as in, "Tormented Body". At around three minutes and thirty seconds comes in the vocalist's voice, except she lets it go on for a while, and with the almost squeaking like sound in her voice, it just does not sound good.

"Empty Halls" fixes that wonderfully. There's less of the squeakiness in the vocals this time, and it actually sounds really, really good. I appreciated the melancholy sound and overall soothing sounds of this song compared to the others. It has a lot going for it, and definitely puts itself higher than the rest of the songs on the album.

This album definitely reminds me of stuff from the 80's, and it's always fun to take a a trip through time and see how things hold up from thirty years ago to now. And this works, in a sense. It's not astronomical, but it does a good job of being very awesome; I can really see this being used as a cinematic soundtrack. I don't know why, but a lot of the songs just would seem perfect for tense moments in films, like during the climax of a gigantic shootout between two enemies that were once friends.

But, putting my wild imagination on the side, I can say that this Italian duo definitely has something going on. It's far from perfect, and could even use some tweaking here and there, but, hell, I enjoyed it, and it's something that I'll be coming back to every so often. Jul 04 2013