Here’s the latest aural wreckage from my homeland. Enjoy – these are all bands that are currently at the forefront of the Italian underground.
1. SATURNINE – Mors Vocat
Saturnine should be no mystery by now. This incredible all-female band from Bologna has released an incredible debut demo in 2012 and has now finally graced us with a full-length album that just exponentially enhances the mysticism and preciousness of that debut release. The band – in a manner very similar to what Gallhammer were doing – fuses crust, ancient doom, black metal and classic metal into a mesmerizing caldron of witchy and occult-sounding punk-metal. In this incredible album you will hear Hellhammer, Amebix, Candlemass, Bathory, Black Sabbath and Burzum and all fused into one spellbinding vortex of blackened and vibrating sonic torture.
2. SOVEREIGN – Deceptum
Blackened hardcore crust of the highest craft and pedigree is what Sovereign brings to you, whose origin on the Italian map is unknown, but who most certainly come from The Boot. This band builds skin-peeling and scorching swarms of bleak noise as they unravel on the listener and absolutely harrowing barrage of blackened riffs and pummeling rhythms. If you like blackened hardcore bands like Hexis, Celeste, The Secret, and UNRU, then this shit if for you. Sovereign build storms of devouring and swirling darkness that will hollow your soul, shatter your dreams and batter your flesh.
3. THE CLEARING PATH – Watershed between Earth and Firmament
The Clearing Path are a one man band from the eastern Italian Alps and the band’s entire imagery, lyrical content and music is focused on celebrating the loneliness and vastness of the peaks and valleys of this world-famous mountainous region of Italy. Main man Gabriele here as astonishingly weaved black metal, post-rock, prog and hardcore into a daunting and evocative sonic landscape, bringing together Blut Aus Nord, Krallice and Panopticon and forcing them into a swirling tempest of blackened and twisting aural chaos. These songs are highly refined, boasting an astonishing home recording quality, and leaning heavily on the progressive and technical side of things but with out loosing an announce of crude and visceral ferocity. Fans of bands like Woe, Krallice, Pale Chalice, and other technically gifted melodic black metal bands will lose their shit over what Gabriele has accomplished.
4. LAMBS – Betrayed from birth
More blackened hardcore, this time using black metal as a mere container of sprawling malevolence and sonically leaning more on the “punk” side of things, and bringing back an edgy, chaotic and muscular form of metallic hardcore that was the pillar sound of old glories of early 00’s post-hardcore like Harkonen, Converge, Cursed, Botch, Bane, early Cave in and the whole HydraHead “school”. Lambs‘ music is essentially punishing, dissonant, and stark metalcore that often slows down to a slow crawl, battering the listener with inhumane series of assassin sludge riffs that bringing to mind the violence of long gone legends in the genre of last decade metallic sludgecore like Knut and Breach. Not to be taken lightly, this shit snaps bone with ease. Brought to you by the fine folks over at Drown Within Records.
5. O – Pietra
O, aka “Circular Sign” are an Italian blackened hardcore band from Biella that we have already introduced to you by way of the video premiere of their brand new song “OXO”, taken from their new album titled Pietra (which means “stone”, or “rock” in Italian), released as a 12″ LP + digital on Grindpromotion and Unquiet Records on October 3rd. A swirling and thundering album, with Pietra O have created a work which pulses with incinerating hardcore ferocity and glows with the icy and stark overtones of melodic black metal, creating a mesmerizing splicing of genres that will surely please all fans of bands like Altar of Plagues, Deafheaven, Planks and Downfall of Gaia.
6. ABATON – We Are Certainly Not Made of Flesh
We have already introduced you to ABATON in the past. Now these Italian blackened sludgecore bruisers have finally released their long awaited new full-length album called “We Are Certainly Not Made of Flesh“, and released last week by Martire Records, Unquiet Records, and Drown Within Records. As their collaboration with VISCERA///recently showed us, the band is capable of erecting massive walls of gigantic and crushing sludge riffs without losing an ounce of touch and feel for masterful psychedelic dirges and eerie and ethereal post-rock passages. At the current state Abaton are probably the finest atmospheric sludgecore band in Italy, and one of the finest currently coming out of Europe. If you like stuff like Starkweather, Grime, Hope Drone, The Atlas Moth, Cult of Luna, Altar of Plagues, Yob etc, then this band is definitely the shit for you.
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