A lyrical concept evolving around vampires, a pretty girl on the front and the coverage of a label that hardly brings out bad material. Taking a look at these factors, there’s nothing but positive things to mention about the second album of the Italian Mandargora Scream. Unfortunately, there is a thing that stands in the way of a worldwide breakthrough: the absence of good songs. Surely songs like "Issergia`s Hope" and its follow-up "Silent Lullabies" show that these musicians know what they’re doing, but it’s such a shame that only these two songs sound so smooth and so sweet. All the songs sound the same in the end, the concept is nicely worked out in the lyrics, but the combination of vampire tales and the music doesn’t exactly fit and the bad English pronunciation is sometimes really depressing.

The band has experienced this more often, by the way.

Their debut album "Fairy Tales From Hell’s Caves" also proved the wonderful concept that can be used within the music of this genre, but on that release too, the songs were somewhat beneath average. Comparing both albums, the band certainly has progressed during the past two years, but unfortunately for the band, it takes more than a well-written concept to write a good album.

The sometimes very well performed mixture of modern gothic, dark wave, but also rock and some metal does however preserve this band from failing completely and will probably give this band some more familiarity in the world of gothic, but I can’t believe it will give them worldwide fame within the upcoming months. Not much of a scream, but indeed more of whisper.