Marplots comes to us from the depths of Italy and believe it or not, does not harbour apparent affections towards orchestras, songs about infinity or soaring choirs backing chorus lines in their metal. The band has opted for a more modern touch of mayhem. Forming in the beginning of 2005, this is the groups second recorded promo.

Dreams And Pains starts off with an ominous machine-keyboard intro that blasts off to a hefty drum beat and bouncing riffing that is topped with a very convincing deep-throated scream. The aggressive parts work very well, but the intensity level drops considerably when the clean choruses with touches of a nu metal-atmosphere take over. When the clean vocals are doubled with harmonies they are good, but when alone and occasionally heavily effect-filtered, they just don’t pack a wallop hard enough to match the good screams.

Another industrial-tinged intro starts Awake Alone that again begins with a nice pounding rhythm and a fist-banging energy. I get strong vibes of Soulfly on this one. The song carries itself again well, with the exception of the clean back-ups. The ending with the very Korn-ish groove is good when in the mood to bounce around. The final slice, Dust, doesn’t spend that much time with intros but goes straight into the point with great riffs with effects making moody backgrounds that remind me of latter day Soilwork. I’d hate to sound too repetitive but the downpoint of the song is again the clean vocals that don’t keep up with the music around them. They just feel half-hearted among the trashing grooves.

The production values are generally good throughout. The amount of bass is commendable, very pounding. The guitars are crunchy good when working together but single riffs sound a tad weak when being there alone. I don’t know if the industrial elements have something to do with the fact that the drums sound quite machine-like at times, which goes a bit against my personal likings.

On the whole, Split From The Dark Side has potent ingredients boiling, but the whole soup ends up uneven. The grooving and harsh singing are great but amidst the occasionally thrashy hints, lackluster clean vocals and hissing intros that take too much time in the first two tracks, cohesion is missing. The production has a few flaws as well, which however are more subjective to the reviewer than on a technical level. With hard work and practise, Marplots will most likely become much stronger in their modernized vision. Let us see how it goes.