Tangibly darker and more primal than Luce, Disintoxication was recorded in the arctic desolation at Toneknik Studios in Umea, Sweden (by Breach and Refused producer Magnus Lindberg) and it shows. Especially with the fact the album is apparently far more personal, dealing with the band’s inner demons (drugs, suicide and all things negative).

Press sheet reading aside, Disintoxication is indeed a dark album, more akin to the likes of Canadians Cursed than many of their U.S. peers simply content to flail and scream angrily. The Secret sounds pissed and depressed, while at the same time the Italians are caustic, angular, pained — elements of crumbling heft and an injection of subtle ambiance round out the experience. Look no further than the title track for the epitome of The Secret’s musical angst and duality, as well as the likes of “Inferno” and “Funeral Monolithe.”

That being said, “Umea,” dedicated to their time at the recording studio, is a full on crawling, loping track. Well done for a band usually chomping at the bit to crank it up. Much like Converge, the maturation is far more natural than a lot of bands forcing their hand at more deliberate material. “Death to Pigs” turns up the speed and snarl, while “Kill The Dead” ends the album with a searing climax.

Along with Another Kind of Death and At the Soundawn, Italy’s ‘core’ contingency seems to be getting some decent bands. Are they a little late to the party? Time will tell.

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.