The dark acoustic rock band KISSIN’ BLACK have released their latest full-length album on October 13, 2023 “Veleno” and promise powerful music with a lot of emotions in chasing through all nerve tracts. Delivering freethinking lyrics that are somehow dark and pleasant but add melancholy, longing, dreams and hope. With a balancing act between soft and hard where the acoustic guitar bows to its electric counterpart more often to enhance the deepened resonance and uniquely capturing passion and diametrical energies while fusing them into their own sound and according to the bands press release: Plumb the depths of their instruments’ souls to electrify their lyrics and lay their feelings bare. To lend the darkness a deepened resonance, the acoustic guitar bows to its electric counterpart more often on the album. The band has increased in hardness and intensity with no detriment to its romantic vein. The band's greatest strength is the elegant way of crossing boundaries. Southern temperament meets the atmosphere of Swiss mountains. The album was produced again by renowned sound guru Rob Viso. Well, this is a new one for me, a dark acoustic rock band.  Has me thinking JAMES TAYLOR meets SLAYER.

“Nycto” is about as diverse of a song as I’ve heard in quite a while with a mixture of soft rock slowly increasing into hard rock accompanied by piano, percussion, acoustic and electric guitar all tossed around in this musical blender that all in all produces a very listenable and inviting track. ”Spotlight” continues with the diversity as more darkened and harsh vocals take center stage over a bouncy tempo of a symphonic collaboration of strings and percussion seasoned nicely with the melodic guitar work. The albums first ballad “Remain” is led by soft, sensitive piano and despite the passionate vocal delivery leaves very little on the table other than making it a good break to go get a beer….so with beer in hand we get back to some hard rocking on the next two tracks “Adrenalin” and “Some are Wild” both are consistent with an arsenal of boisterous and gnarly riffs integrated with sinister and creepy vocals that inject (in a good way) a skin crawling experience. Despite delivering some intermittent harder passages “Who said No!” and “Lena Luna”  both would fall into the soft, semi-ballad category.  The album ends with the emotionally charged “Veleno (Bittersweet)” sung with pure passion from the heart of Giu Mastrogiacomo with the velvety vocals portraying dark and tantalizing wanderlust. I usually never use the word “beautiful” to describe a hard rock song, but that says it accurately on this one.

“Veleno” is most definitely not a true headbanging album, it has too many twists and turns and I think will get better with every listen. The album offers some unique and introspective songs with a lot for the senses to comprehend, but I would really love to see what KISSIN’ BLACK could accomplish if they focused more on the harder side and put the sensitive side on the back burner….just a thought.