The Wicked Venetians are a three-piece English rock band. They are rapidly growing in notoriety… just like the rot in popular culture. Surrey based and inspired by love, death and everything in-between – from the depraved writings of the Marquis De Sade to Nietzsche and Palahniuk.
The Wicked Venetian main source of sounds and ideas are stolen from bands like Joy Division, Muse, Him, Nirvana, The Smiths and Arcane Roots.
The band quickly began to earn a reputation for their energetic, anything can happen and usually does live show. After the circulation of a couple of tracks and some homemade videos on youtube, these black-hearted Veneziani earned some modest attention and signed to Glasstone Records.
We have been listening to their album ‘My Heart Was in the Wrong Place’ on rotation…
Here’s what we think:
The album starts with pangs of icy piano and guitars that shimmer and scream before the seismic grungy riff of ‘Formaldehyde’ limps towards the listener – after this you are left with just an empty vortex. ‘Hell’ follows. The mournful vocals are painfully low curved (not unlike a little-less gruff than usual Nick Cave) – with a hurried pace that seems to rush far-too-quickly to the languishing chorus-line.
‘Linger’ is angrier and distantly punkier. The voice is clear and grand in an operatic manner. Though it is muddied by the darkest depths of those tangled, polygon-shaped guitar-sounds.
‘Justine’ is quite clearly the stand-out track on this imaginative album. The chorus of this track: “ I love you … Justine , Justine … “ has been running around in our consciousness (on constant replay) since we saw the band perform it at their superb album launch at the Hob, Staines, last week.
The song has just the right ratio of grandiosity / rock ‘n’ roll. It also has dark aspirations, unspoken nuances and sinister undertones. Pop perfection !
‘Horrified’ is a ramshackle affair. A lively construction of collapsing riffs, beautiful drums – and vocals that seem to pop-up everywhere like dangerous tongues of fire.
‘My Heart Was in the Wrong Place’ is much more punk than it first looks and it poses the question … are the Wicked Venetians a punk ‘n’ roll band or a rockin‘ punk band?
You decide…
Words & Images: @neilmach © 2014
Link:
https://www.facebook.com/TheWickedVenetians
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