Thoughts Words Action - Amalia Bloom - Maiden Voyage - https://thoughtswordsaction.com/2020/07/25/abmvcd/

Amalia Bloom originates from Vicenza, and Maiden Voyage is one of their latest offerings to the broader audience. This Italian emotive post-hardcore quintet has been active for a while, paving their way to the top with a profoundly melodic, but yet delicate approach to the genre. The group worked hard since the formation at the very beginnings of 2014, defined the sound, and decided in which direction they want to sail on as a band. It wasn’t until April of 2019 when they published a couple of singles such as Chiaroscuro and Vessel as announcements for their debut full-length album. The group wanted to sound as good as it possibly could be.

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Through Maiden Voyage, Amalia Bloom offers eight post-hardcore compositions deeply rooted in the essentials of emo-core sound. The group relies on massive guitar shreddings, saturated by the echoic harmonizations. Amalia Bloom appears both ferociously aggressive and melancholic at the same time, but it perfectly balances between these distinctive expressions. However, the band also includes some compelling melodic hardcore ideas empowered by metalcore dynamics along the way. Both production, arrangements, and song structures combine the best affinities of the contemporary trends, mainly demonstrated by the vast portion of the bands within the genre. Still, Amelia Bloom simultaneously sounds innovative, astounding, and modern.

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Guitars burst with relentless energy through dense guitar shreds, massive enough to crush everything in a wide radius. While the rhythm guitar punches directly in the face somewhere in the background, other guitar does quite the opposite. Lead guitar calms down powerful shreds through various orchestrations, showcased through echoic octave themes, a wide array of technically demanding maneuvers, polyphonic acrobatics, and other guitar licks. The incredible rhythm section supports all these virtuosities with intense drumming experience, rarely performed in this accordance with the remaining portion of the group. Low-end tones come somewhere in between with slightly distorted basslines, heavy enough to crush all the bones. However, even these aggressive moments sound soothing, delightful, and memorable.

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Maiden Voyage offers both heaven and hell through tremendous polyphonous experience. This album settles down the neverending quarrel between mind healing atmospheres and hellish orchestrations. The compositions are thoughtfully written and composed to provide both emotive and calmful indie moments. However, Maiden Voyage carries enough delicacies to satisfy those who are deeply rooted in screamo, melodic hardcore, and metalcore music. Head over to Engineer Records web store and grab Maiden Voyage on vinyl or compact disc.

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Kraykulla - Amalia Bloom - Maiden Voyage - https://kraykulla.wordpress.com/2019/05/30/record-review-amalia-bloom-maiden-voyage/

Italy never ceases to amaze with the underground hardcore punk scene over there. This time I listened and reviewed for our zine the new Amalia Bloom record.

 

These guys are hailing from Vicenza, Italy and are playing melodic hardcore punk with post hardcore and some screamo influences. The new record was a process of two years in writing and recording, but finally here it is and it contains 8 songs. Chiaroscuro is a fine miniature that serves as a kind of intro to the record. The whole album can be categorized as a concept album with the story evolving around one boy and his journey through his consciousness and imagination, thus trying to discover the secrets of life, death, existence and avoid personal demons.

 

The music is sometimes melodic Cali punk style, but soon evolves into noise parts, then succumbing into brutal screaming parts, yet to return again as deeply emotional singing and melodies, that makes it original and great journey for the ears and mind of the listener. I listened to this album on a quiet Saturday sunny morning, being home alone and I just closed my eyes and let the music take me to the other places, becoming in a way that boy from the lyrical side that this record tries to tell with the music and texts. This is a great one, just showing how hardcore can be both diverse and original and that is the beauty of it all.

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Ox Fanzine - Amalia Bloom - Maiden Voyage - https://www.ox-fanzine.de/review/amalia-bloom-maiden-voyage-122817

On the cover a boy against the background of the black sky, only lit by twinkling stars - in front of him a wide open window with an unknown, light blue world behind it ...

Rooted in the punk scene of Vicenza in northern Italy, AMALIA BLOOM present their debut album “Maiden Voyage ". In the new post-hardcore guise, they send the little boy from the cover on a journey of discovery into his own, unknown dream world.

Hard screaming, fast drums and sometimes a progressive rhythm sound like desperation; Fear and the fear of sinking too deeply into one's own unreal cosmos. On the other hand there is melodic, sometimes two-part clear vocals that celebrate the sweet side of melancholy - also to a quick snear of the drums,or sometimes in quieter parts. Almost always there: floating guitar sound carpets that provide the necessary emotional framework. In between, spoken word or a blast beat. All of this is perhaps not a groundbreaking reinvention of the genre, but due to the many different elements, also within the songs, extremely diverse and entertaining.

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Distrolution - https://www.distrolution.com/italian-hardcore-band-amalia-bloom-talks-about-their-upcoming-projects/

Amalia Bloom is an emo/ post-hardcore band hailing from Vicenza, Italy. We are active since last year but we started writing “Maiden Voyage” three years ago. At that time, we all had different musical projects, but we have always perceived Amalia Bloom as a growing-up project. We wanted to make a step forward and take things more seriously. We put energy, passion, time and we are still trying to find our balance, both musically and as individuals.

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In Maiden Voyage, you can clearly hear some influences from the bands we love the most, bands such as Converge, Counterparts, Deafheaven but our aim was to write simply what we had in mind, not paying too much attention on fitting perfectly in a particular style of music. Playing in a band doesn’t only mean making music but also managing so many other different aspects. We try to follow as much as we can our DIY ethos in which we really believe. Tommaso, our singer, is into the social management/booking side; Ettore worked on the release with the labels; Tony, Stefano and Federico usually print our merch together in our rehearsal room and so forth.

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We are also surrounded by a lot of cool people and friends who contribute to the project. Above anyone else there’s Yari that not only joined the band as temporary guitar player because Ettore had some physical problems, but also recorded, mixed and mastered our music and he is an immensely talented dude.

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