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Maledictis — Echoes of Conscience
(bandcamp no #, 2025, CD / DL)

by Peter Thelen, Published 2026-02-20

Echoes of Conscience Cover art

Maledictis is a latin word meaning “cursed,” something that certainly would not apply to the music on this, the group’s debut album, but I guess once you have a name, you’re pretty much stuck with it. Maledictis is a Milwaukee, Wisconsin based chamber rock project led by composer, lyricist, and multi-instrumentalist John Marszalkowski involving eight other musicians from near and far, six additional guest players, and seven more singers as part of a choir. Between the main players, they have most instruments covered: guitar, drums, bass, piano, organ, flute, trumpet, flugelhorn, violin, viola, glockenspiel, vibraphone. The lead singer is Kara Melodic, though Marszalkowski and others are credited with vocals as well. The guest players provide additional viola and cello, bassoon, French horn, tuba, saxophones, and additional vocals. The members seem to hail from all over Wisconsin, with their parts recorded in nearby studios, but Maledictis is clearly a project and not a working band that would typically perform live, although I have to say that seeing this performed live would be pretty epic. One could describe the music in these fifteen tracks as a variant of symphonic rock with full choir, but without much of the bombast that ‘symphonic rock’ typically implies, though they do stand their ground as far as the rock element goes, and there are some traces of metal here and there. The fifteen cuts are distributed into eight longer cuts (as in three to six minutes) with shorter instrumental interludes between them. While the music often has a ‘churchy’ feel (a choir in the mix has a tendency to do that), a quick review of the lyrics offers no overt religious references so far as I can tell. The voice of lead singer Kara Melodic reminds me a bit of Kelly Secret from the Baltimore based band / project Passionfix, though the heavy symphonic grandeur of Maledictis all taken is a bit more reminiscent of the British band Solstice, and perhaps one could argue Annie Haslam’s Renaissance, although here there are vocal harmonies on nearly every track. While I could do my standard track-by-track dissection it’s probably best to go over to the Bandcamp page and listen to the whole album beginning to end.

Filed under: New releases, 2025 releases

Related artist(s): Maledictis

More info
http://maledictis.bandcamp.com/album/echoes-of-conscience

 

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