I settled down for this one, in front of the mirror, with a make up brush in my hand. Having taken in the threshold-extreme cover, and the fact that this was from Italy, I equipped myself to slap on the corpse paint for a good dose of black, black metal antics.
How wrong can a middle aged man (with a half painted face) be? No sooner than the rhythmic, electronic intro has subsided and the furious blasting/icy tremolo lines are upon us, the song breaks down into a doomy, theatrical, punkish, almost musical theatre, vocal section….and cue me dropping my brush. I don’t pick it up again.
My single blackened eye and haphazard white facial streaks are focused on what has to be, without a doubt, the most unexpected and perplexing record of the year so far. Black metal progressions ebb and flow behind a veritable palate of influences and styles throughout the opener ‘Every Tongue Has Its Thorn’ (which I am resolutely going to believe is a play on the absolute all time classic track by US rockers Poison), and this sets the tone for what is going to be about a predictable as greyhound racing.
Vocalist Erba is responsible for much of this chaos – as she adeptly switches between punky chants, doomy operatics, throaty coughs and, probably my favourite, the abdominal ‘belly’ rumbler. Time signatures change like your underpants but often return, forcefully, to either a straight heavy metal beat or, at times, the kind of 4/4 stomp that bands like Killing Joke would be proud of. There are even trumpets – not that you are in any way surprised by this.
I genuinely don’t know what to make of this. There are times, such as during the groove-filled ‘Silence Walk With Me’ where I completely get that which they set out to achieve, but there are other moments, such in the perplexing ‘Il veleno della Natura’, as Erba once again fires out words in both Italian and English depending on how she feels, where I feel almost compelled to make a critical decision on something I simply don’t understand. Then she starts repeating things about Seat 21 in ‘Delta-9 (161) and I question what ‘critical’ even means any more. If it means to take a load of mind-altering drugs, then I guess that makes more sense.
So, as I wipe the last few bits of corpse paint from my face, like a lethargic ghoul, I leave this one to you all. Is this genius? Or is this pushing boundaries for the sake of pushing them? To unlock that probably requires the smallest key on your bunch – the one that you still have no idea what it’s for.
Best Paired With: Spaghetti Junction, Cognitive Impairment And A Jar Of Jelly Babies.
reviewed by jaff.
Ponte del Diavolo – De Venom Natura is out now on season of Mist.
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