Persefone
Core

January 2008
Released: 2007, Burning Star Records/IntroMental
Rating: 1.0/5
Reviewer: Anders Sandvall

Persefone comes from Andorra, the small country between Spain and France. The band started out in 2003 and soon after released their debut TRUTH INSIDE THE SHADES. In 2004 the debut became available to more parts of the world due to their signing to Intro Mental management. Two new members were recruited: Aleix Dorca on drums and Marc Martins on lead vocals. Work on the second opus began shortly thereafter. Persefone are influenced by bands like Opeth, Borknagar, Arcturus, Symphony X and Cacophony, which you can definitely hear. At the same time, it sounds like Persefone can’t decide which musical leg they want to stand on. It’s a strange mix of progressive technical and complex metal and a lot of death metal. Despite the many times I have listened to the album, my ears simply can’t adjust to the strange musical fusion. They also feature calmer piano parts and female vocals, but that only makes the music feel even messier.

It’s not easy to sum up what type of music the band plays and even if I could it wouldn’t matter because it’s not good. There are way too many things going on at the same time and it’s too hard and difficult to listen to Persefone for a long period of time.

The 13 songs are divided into three different parts with 4-5 songs in each part. It’s a theme album, but what the theme is about I have absolutely no idea. The bio says the it’s about The Greek Goddess of the Underworld and maybe it is, but I’d never have figured that out without reading it.

The material can’t stand on its own and I’m really bored with theme and concept albums. CORE definitely doesn’t make me any friendlier to the trend. The only positive thing about Persefone is that they are from Andorra and it’s fun to hear music from less-common areas. But that’s about it.