Liguria is a coastal region of Italy, where hills and mountains rise up not far from the sea, giving a very special effect to both the landscape and its people. From Liguria come Varego, founded in 2009 by musicians who already boasted a long militancy in the Ligurian underground. Varego in Ligurian dialect was used to indicate the plant Euphorbia, which has both a therapeutic and a poisonous effect. In the Middle Ages the term averragare was used to describe the use of poisoning the banks to catch fish. So Varego is something jarring, something poisonous. Their music is an ancient mantra of destruction and veneration towards ancient entities and ancient forces, like the Great Old Ones described by H.P.Lovecraft. Varego dilate distances and stare into the eye of the cyclone that will sweep away the human race. In their musical maelstrom one can find echoes of sludge, Neurosis, things from Natas or Mastodonian passages. I think, however, that their music and majestic vision comes closest to Neurosis. The arrival of Maelstrom is an intro, a surfing over the last wave, to preapare us to Horror in the sky, a monstrous form that will cover the sky and reject all other life forms. Varego step on the accelerator for the third track Carved in stone, an evil vision of astral gates opening onto abominations, and also splendid sound openings, enhanced by the splendid voice of Davide Marcenaro, who marries various vocal registers very well. The journey into the unspeakable continues with Centaur of the Abyss, an Italian title but lyrics in English like the rest of the album, a great piece with a thousand notes and passages, which refers to the great names of the genre, names to which Varego have nothing to envy. In the song Cataclysm and mutation, Varego‘s great love for Alice In Chains comes to the fore, godfathers of an entire generation, in which I proudly count myself, who left grunge to arrive at something very different, but inseparable from it. Soul to devour is the only song not written by guitarist Gerolamo Lucisano, but by bassist Marco Red Damonte, a true force of nature channelled into an electric bass; this song is a bitter statement of what the human race is capable of, bearer of pain and misfortune. The Threatening Horizon is an instrumental piece in which Varego display all their musical prowess, really giving us the feeling that we are facing a menacing horizon. We then come to Odyssey, a magniloquent description of a cursed journey beyond the last stars… insanity swells the sails and bears us on to the seas beyond the sun… After the wandering and destruction comes a kind of rebirth Heralding the resurrection, a single rescue that makes one reign, and may be the prelude to something. The album closes with Shapes of beauty, the end of this journey in front of an immortal soul that proselytises and lies deathless in a universe we do not know, described by music that is now psychedelic, now aggressive and final. Basically, the album is a concept album, which goes through processes of destruction, reconstruction and creation, with processes very similar to those of alchemy. Varego‘s music is the soundtrack of something sleeping in our abyss, a magnificent devilish work of destruction of the accursed human race. There is not a dull song, an inadequate passage, a moment of lull, the musicians are excellent starting from Simon Lepore’s nuclear drums to the aforementioned colleagues, there is a continuous groove that grinds neuronal synapses and gives birth to new worlds. A truly remarkable record, a debut that strikes immediately, in fact it is no coincidence that it was mastered by Billy Anderson, producer of Melvins, Neurosis and Eyehategod among others. In my opinion, Varego is on a par with these names, and I am not exaggerating, they have a very powerful poetics and smashing music. It’s the soundtrack of the apocalypse, an uproar. (M.Argo – MetalEyes 30/7/2012)

2012 – Argonauta Records