Year: 2025
Label: Steinklang Industries

First impressions can be deceiving. Especially in music, especially if you are somewhat knowledgeable in a genre. Sometimes it leads you to pin into place an artist or album very quickly. “Oh, this instantly brings to mind so and so. Therefore this is album can be put into this niché.”

And every now and then an artist will just refuse to remain so pigeonholed.

This happened to me very much with Italian Alya Serpentis. Based on the opening track, A Modern Story Part I, this is very typical neofolk. Strumming acoustic guitar, understated melancholy male vocals, lots of reverb, and a bit of synth to add flesh to the bones.

Whilst essentially this is an apt description of The Sky Falls Down, it’s in no way sufficient. Very soon the Italian duo start defying such simplistic descriptions. And the weathered reviewer, who thought he’d seen all neofolk has to offer, finds himself confounded.

The thing with Alya Serpentis are the synths. They go well and truly beyond the ken of regular neofolk, into – for the genre – wildly experimental territory. There are kinds of weird undulating, bleeping and pulsating sounds, laced with liberal amounts of echo and reverb, which take the whole into deeply unusual, experimental territory. The occasionally used electric guitar also does the same: drenched in reverb and effects, played somewhat unconventionally, it takes The Sky Falls Down into decidedly weird territory.

As is wont to happen when you experiment, some of the time it works. Some of the time it doesn’t. Occasionally, such as on the bizarre layers of synth on Whisper, Alya Serpentis can get quite grating. The psychedelic instrumental sections of Over The Hill, on the other hand, work a treat. And when they’re at their most traditional, such as on Man Of Integrity, Alya Serpentis prove there is a solid, classic neofolk foundation to their music.

So, in the end, The Sky Falls Down is a bit of a mixed bag. Some of it works really well, and presents a group with a genuinely rather unique vision on neofolk. Some of it displays the same group, not getting it quite right. Luckily, there’s only one track that’s completely throwaway: a very redundant and inferior cover of The Handsome Family’s iconic Far From Any Road.

If you like your neofolk with a bit of a weird twist, Alya Serpentis might just be for you. But be warned: it’s not all bliss. There are bumps on this ride.

Visit Alya Serpentis on Bandcamp