A little more than two years ago I found myself praising the first full length of the Sardinians VIII, authors at that time, with their Drakon, of a black metal with wide doom nuances and full of evocative and melodic passages. Things have changed a lot in the time between that release and the present Decathexis, not so much from the qualitative point of view that, as we’ll see, has not suffered any backlash, but from the stylistic approach: VIII are now a reality dedicated to an avant-garde black that can be approached to the most recent parts of the French school, but made with a personality and a touch of madness that accentuates the peculiarity. And it is precisely from a concept based on states of mental alteration (Decathexis is, broadly speaking, a pathological form of progressive disinterest and detachment from the surrounding reality) that DrakoneM, always helped by the faithful drummer Mark, takes the moves to develop an impressive work for how the material is shaped at will without, in the end, the end result suffers particularly in terms of fluidity. It was not easy, in fact, to concentrate in a single album a similar amount of influences, corresponding to as many changes of scenery and atmosphere, keeping firm control of the compositions without being overwhelmed by their experimental vis. Since the beginning of Symptom, in fact, it is clear that Decathexis will offer fifty minutes of unpredictability, combined with an extreme sound that goes beyond the simple canons of black or death: VIII play what can be defined as avant-garde metal, without this definition appears pompous or inadequate. So the incursions of the saxophone, an instrument that extreme metal listeners normally see as smoke in the eyes, are just one of the symbols of the discomfort that VIII translate into music: the three tracks, whose delimitation seems more a necessity than a logical consequence, so they could be even ten or only one, do not leave certain points of reference and it is almost impossible to predict which direction the sound will take. Black avant-garde, technical and progressive death, ambient, everything flows and changes vortically in Decathexis, a work with which VIII try in a decisive way to break away from conventions, risking their own with the abandonment of more comfortable roads but getting a really satisfactory result, which leaves as the only question the reaction of those who followed the tests of the past in the presence of a steering so decisive and violent infirm to their modus operandi. Little bad, since hopefully DrakoneM and Mark should get new and numerous consensus for an album that should be savored, however, keeping a wide open mind.

2016 – Third I Rex