Taking the poetry of Giovanni Pascoli as narrative muse these oddly named Italians are off in search of the infinite vanity of everything on their debut album here. Calling the actual band vain would be completely wrong however as they are anything but and the philosophical trio do not give anything particularly biographical away about themselves and very simply describe their music as ‘Italian Black Metal.’
After a brief introduction apparently provided by power noise combo E-Aktion we are swept off into an hours-worth of burgeoning fast paced scything blackness. Guitars are thick and fast and furrow away along with some good rasping vocals from singer Tevildo. Naturally everything is in Italian, song titles and lyrics, so it is as far as I am concerned as I am not feeling like going further into poetic inspiration and the instrumentation is already enough to keep my interests up and get me head-banging along, up for the music to do the talking. There’s a strong sense of melody and an even stronger one of purpose about things and the band really seem committed to stridently make their mark with a sonic template that’s both dense and imaginative.
I guess at times when it slows down there is a sense of romanticism about things, it moves from neck-cracking pace to more sombre tones. There’s a large clattering emphasis on the snares with cymbals being given a thorough whacking and at times sounding like shattering china. Guitars are played at such a rapidly strumming pace that you can imagine fingers bleeding and there’s some nice lead lined bottom end bass definition on things. Songs are well thought out and often hit the seven minute mark, developing without becoming stale at all and those vocals really do sound thick and gravid, kind of giving me a sore throat just listening to them.
There’s a very unique feel to this, although European sounding without deciphering the vocals it would be very difficult to guess country of origin here and having listened to this quite a few times now I still couldn’t stick CCE in a box with such and such a band as there’s nobody else they immediately remind me of.
It’s not an album for track dissection as I am just going to keep repeating myself here and think I have said all that really needs to be. Well that’s the case until the last number which has a bit of acoustic guitar and spoken word then pauses for a while and continues with ten minutes of plinkity-plonkity riff repetition which is a complete waste of time and only worthy of one listen at the very most. Apart from that not too shoddy although it’s one of those releases that I think will be enjoyed more by listeners who speak Italian and can affiliate with the themes behind it the most.
(6.5/10 Pete Woods)
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