A quick look and the band members best albums of 2004 gives you a quick insight as to the style of this Italian mob of noisy young men.; Converge You Fail Me, The End Within Dividia, Isis Panopticon, oh and Converge You Fail Me. Did I mention Converge?

Yep, Italian Converge lovers unite as The Secret are awash with caustic discordance, acidic dissonance and seething, pained screams. Throw in a few introspective interludes a la Isis/Neurosis and you get a surprisingly competent, sometimes spiteful, sometimes tranquil debut album. Other than Converge, The Blinding Light and The Power and the Glory come to mind as immediate comparisons, and the choppy, biting riffs contain a little DEP also, but even with the name dropping, due to the The Secret’s love of Isis Luce has a pretty strong individual character.

Vocally, Marco Coslovich has a standard high register, angst filled scream, with no variety to go with the musical shifts. The ambient interludes are not overdone or overwrought as there are no vast segues of 12 minutes injections of escapism but rather subtle injections within the furious shifting dissonance of the songs as heard on ‘Fire Isn’t Always Meant to Burn’ and ‘The Last One’. Only the aptly titled ‘Segue’ perfroms as a standalone breather within the controlled chaos. The squeal heavy material will grate some listeners, but it’s balanced out with stout injections of burly machismo (‘Pretty Girls make Graves’, ‘Memento Mori’). Also, even within their intricate discordance, it never gets too overwhelming to where it becomes atonal diarrhea, as with a veteran skill belying their youth, The Secret are able to reign in most of the material’s complexity and make it more digestible (‘Close to Me, Inside My Heart’), even without the aid of the well placed interludes.

I hate to bring up ethnic stereotypes, but I had time believing an effort this good was Italian as it easily measures up to anything the US has to offer in the genre, and throw in this is a debut to boot with a local production that also measures up to the gritty stateside sound and The Secret are definitely a band to watch.

[Visit the band's website]

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