Wings of Pain: STORM{O} – Debut Album Review + Stream

Hailing from Belluno, an Alpine town embedded in the Dolomites of Northern Italy, come STORM{O}, a young and ferocious post-hardcore band who’s debut album Sospesi Nel Vuoto Bruceremo In Un Attimo E Il Cerchio Sara’ Chiuso has just dropped on 12″ Vinyl LP through Shove Records, Désordre Ordonné, Fallo Dischi, Dischi Bervisti, Here and Now! Records, Epileptic Media, La Fine, Left Hand, and Strom Records. The hype around this band is great right now, and the band have already amassed a ton of raving reviews all over the web for this debut release, and this comes as absolutely no surprise, as simply put, this debut album by the Italian hardcore unit, is simply nothing short of fucking incredible. The feat kicks off with a scraping industrial intro, a little under three minutes, in which tension and negativity cluster and aggregate as if within the pull of some weird gravitational force, calling all wrath to itself, hoarding it in its arms until it can hold no more…

Then, three minutes in, the album just literally explodes in your fucking face like a hand granade, pulverizing bones in a cloud of pure rage with the suffocating two minutes of mauling anger that are Sueprnova. Two minutes that sound like a frightening alarm going off, setting the tone for another thirty minutes of scary pure concentrated fucking wrath to come. From then on, STORM{O} never let go of the listener’s jugular, biting down into flesh with more intensity, locking into mindless and uncontrolled metallic hardcore anger that brings to mind bands like Converge, Botch, and Curl Up And Die, and ripping back and forth between stabs of blistering noise-grind and puzzling moments of dangerously placid and introverted shoegaze and noise rock. The guitars are so sharp and cutting, they feel like razorwire spiraling around your entire body, tightening their grip and yanking you from side to side, slicing through flesh and cutting off all circulation in an enormous escalation of pain and torment. The rhythm section is absolutely relentlessness, and it literally bulldozes through every song with pulverizing force, knocking everything to the ground.

There is so much going on in this album that at times its rage and unpredictability feel absolutely overwhelming. As you try to catch your breath, song after song, STORM{O} just deny you the privilege and shove your head back under the surface to be beaten left and right by one punishing blow after an another. Stylistically, the whole work is all over the place: some moments bring to mind math-rock stalwarts like Craw and Keelhaul, other moments bring to mind early Cave In, These Arms Are Snakes and some screamo bands like Envy and Glassjaw. They also leave room for melody and more eerie passages, but then everything gets ripped apart and fractured by punishing intervals of frightening brutality, the kind of anger and destruction you would only find in bands like Nasum, Converge, Gaza and Oathbreaker. All in all, Sospesi Nel Vuoto is a tough as fuck, a brilliantly crafted modern post-hardcore album and an absolutely towering achievement for such a young band who has just appeared on the scenes for the first time. This album demands everyone’s unconditional support.