Octavia Sperati is a gothic / doom metal band from Norway and this is their second disc. Their style is quite similar to The Gathering’s Mandylion and Nighttime Birds but with less doom and more of a catchy classic hard rock vibe. Grace Submerged is a dramatic improvement over their debut, Winter Enclosure. Although Winter Enclosure had several excellent songs with great melodies and hooky riffs, about half of them were sort of plodding doom, not a style I usually find engaging. There is none of this on Grace Submerged; instead, the songs are all accessible and catchy with a very satisfying thick, heavy, groovy rhythm reminiscent of early The Gathering. Like those discs, the songs on Grace Submerged are primarily guitar-driven with only sparse keys.

Their female vocalist, Silje Wergeland, sounds remarkably like Anneke van Giersbergen at her most dramatic and this again reinforces the similarities of Grace Submerged to early The Gathering. Silje is smooth and musical with a strong, dynamic voice that complements nicely with the heavy guitars.

It is natural to compare Grace Submerged with early The Gathering in terms of song quality rather than just style. In this regard the bands are not really in the same league; Grace Submerged lacks the timeless infectious groove and almost hypnotic emotional impact of The Gathering. Mandylion and Nighttime Birds are now over ten years old; when they were first released I was, and still am, amazed by how fresh and captivating the melodies and riffs were – dark and gothic, yet so accessible, almost danceable in places. But as engaging as this style is, there is not a lot of room for innovation so there was an evitable sameness about the songs, especially if Mandylion and Nighttime Birds are heard in one sitting. Grace Submerged was not able to overcome this limitation either. Although the overall impact of the disc is quite exciting, it does not invite frequent re-listens since, for the most part, there is just too little variety from song to song.

For more information visit the band’s MySpace site http://www.myspace.com/octaviasperati or http://www.octavia-sperati.com

7.5/10