Jullian’s Lullaby - Dreaming of Your Fears
Dreaming of Your Fears
CD Info
2011
STF / Germany
11 Tracks
English Lyrics
There’s a lot of good music coming out of Greece these days, I’ve probably spent more time listening to music from the Cradle of Civilization than from any other place the last several months, and all of it is outstanding, and it seems like it gets better with each release. And this may be the best so far, depending on your personal taste, of course. The band is from Athens and they use a fair number of performers. And my preference is for large casts, although I can understand that not everyone can put 400 on stage like Therion does on a regular basis. Here we get a double female vocal lead with Margina and Efthimia who do a decidedly classical approach that regularly moves to the operatic in style. However, there are a lot of instrumentalists as well, and a solid male death vocal, everything you need musically along with some first rate production, song writing and lyrics, after the fashion of all Greek Gothic. The instrumental includes the traditional guitars and percussion augmented by a serious violin component, a flute and some significant symphonic provided through the usual approaches. There are some other performers as well, this is no 4 man, er, woman band. And they have produced a Gothic sound that is outstanding across the board, the hard stuff, the beautiful, the dark and the mysterious.
It shouldn’t take long figure out whether or not you like this material, here’s an intro, the second cut from the CD entitled Scarlet Reign. You get much of the band’s sound, that solid dual vocal, the violins, the symphonic, the solid guitars. The song is a pretty good cover of what the band has to offer. But, there are other directions that appear in other songs, as well as additional musicians and / or vocalists. Here we get a third female vocalist in another of the CD’s more metal sounding productions, even as it begins with a soft violin followed by an acoustic guitar, sounds that appear regularly throughout the music. This one is Kiss Me Not (Tonight), and again, the music moves around between styles as we progress but always with the solid female vocals that are consistent on every track.
Interestingly enough, as I was listening to the CD for the first time, I was completing Lynda LaPlante’s Gothic tale The Red Dahlia, a novel based on the infamous Black Dahlia murder case from the 40s in Los Angeles. And the physical CD fit in perfectly, especially the color from the CD, which can be seen here. And the music, and even more so, the lyrics, seem to fit this dark tale. On this cut, Where We Stand There We Fall, we get an almost perfect interpretation for this Gothic direction:
And I crossed the line / Between sense and madness
Walked inside mud, / Blood and storm
Nature’s gift is our treasure / Never did I forget
what is left behind / written in the stars / written in our hearts
One moment can last forever
Dahlia indeed. . . . and that dark violin can only serve to enhance the insanity that is so much a part of that tale, and a part of this Gothic sound as well. The song, according to guitarist Elias Negrin, " talks about war and battle as experienced by a soldier away from home trying to defend his land." However, alternative interpretations are clearly appropriate, especially given the overwhelming red background. Elias talked about that background saying, " Katia's work on the CD is another interesting part (to me) as she is non that familiar with our music style and has a fairly personal taste which I like (of course) since seems quite different from the usual staff around." It does provide a perfect interpretation, going especially well with the Scarlet Reign track.
Membership in Jullian’s Lullaby seems to be a flexible commodity. We have the two main female leads, Margina and Efthimia, or Aprilia as she is called locally, and a range of additional performers. And they include a number of styles. According to Elias: " Savvas Betinis (member of "Acid Death" and "Kinetic" also) has done brutal male vocals on CD. He is an old friend of mine and gladly accepted our invitation to participate in the album." It’s not a sound you get all the time in Greek Gothic but it is very well done and adds a relevant quality to the overall tone of the music. Additionally, again according to Elias, "The third female vocalist appearing as a guest in ‘Kiss me not tonight’ live video, is Efrossene Papamichalopoulou ex-member of the band who did all female vocals in ‘I can hear you thinking...’ demo CD (2008). We are good friends and have worked together in some other projects since 2001." Again, flexibility seems to be the order of the day. And it doesn’t relate strictly to the vocals, it includes the instrumental components . Elias explains, "Symphonic parts are mostly samples (programmed by myself) except for violins that are performed by a real player (Triantafyllos Vavatsikos), and flute in ‘Disinfecting my heart’ performed by Ioanna Karaveva." Anytime you can get this many top flight musicians to participate in a focused effort you are likely to see a positive result, and that seems to be the case here.
Music doesn’t seem to be the only place where "guests" are utilized. There was a "guest" lyricist involved also, one Anna Spanogiorgou from Thessaloniki, hometown of SC writer Frozen Angel. Must be something in the water there since both are outstanding at their crafts. Anna provides a slightly different lyrical style in Disinfecting My Heart where there is both a sung and spoken vocal. We begin with a mournful vocal of regret, one of pain, sung by the vocalists over the soulful violin. But, midway through the song, the tone changes, words become spoken and the direction is altered. The lyrics lose their softness and move to a harsher direction:
Filled with hate my sick mind
Is my holy temple now
I am leaving you behind
I am now the unkind
The final two tracks cover similar ground. The song is Just For That Day, and, again, we go to the dark and remorseful. The first cover includes lyrics, dark lyrics, but done with a metal sound:
Feel the emptiness
Live the pain
Defeat your loneliness
For just one day
It’s a haunting song, beautiful but sung with a dark, mournful tone, a violin that provides an almost Transylvanian sound. But, the second version is an acoustic approach to the same song, done with similar keyboards, with the same vocals, the violin that maintains the same feeling of loss, but with that different sound that one gets with an acoustic component. A little more symphonic maybe, but it gives the song a completely different feel. Amazing what one minor alteration can do for a song.
Jullian’s Lullaby is a different approach to the standard Greek Gothic, which is outstanding to begin with. But here we get a bigger interpretation to that sound, more vocals, more instruments and a greater variety to the musical structure as well as the lyrical direction. It takes a lot of people to make something this diverse, and this sophisticated. And bigger is, at least in this case, better. And I count that as a 10. As big as it gets.
