'Tuned In' review: Alesana's 'Place' is endlessly shifting

alesana

The hard-rock band Alesana is breathtakingly ambitious on its new “A Place Where the Sun Is Silent,” going farther than few bands of any genre would go. Yet paradoxically, they don’t go far enough.

Fronted by vocalist/guitarist/pianist Shawn Milke, the North Carolina band recorded the release in Oregon with producer Kris Crummett. Their creation is a two-act, 16-track opus loosely inspired by Dante’s “Inferno.” Arrangements feature frequent shifts in time signatures, readings of Italian prose, choirs, strings, horns and piano-dominated music. The insert includes elaborate illustrations and even a short story penned by Milke and additional vocalist Dennis Lee.

The lyrics are loaded with obligatory angst, but they’re finessed by lines such as, “Imprisoned soul seized in a chamber of feculent horror” (“Hand in Hand With the Damned”) and “You had the best of me, now taste the worst” (“A Guilded Masquerade”). Extra credit for use of the term “vexatious kiss” (on “Lullaby of the Crucified”).

Unfortunately, this massive project is clunky, primarily brought down not by the eclectic nuance, but rather by the mundane stretches where the band forces in the requisite screamo rock stuff that contrasts singing with screeching vocals sometimes contrasted further by growling vocals. (In tandem, the screeching and growling sounds like a cartoonish standoff by feral animals.) That said, guitarists Milke, Patrick Thompson and Alex Torres are generally terrific and help fuse the theatrics into cohesion on about half of the release.

Had Alesana just gone for the full-on rock-opera experience, “A Place Where the Sun Is Silent” could have potentially struck gold. But instead, the band hedges its bets and resorts to routine tricks. The result is a giant mess, though by no means an epic fail.

Rating: 3 stars (out of five)

© 2011, Knoxville News Sentinel Co.
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