Day: November 1, 2016

The musical project conceived by Hertz Kankarok reveals itself as anomalous since a moniker that, at first glance, leaves strange sensations, until you get to the modus operandi, which sees our composing songs without actually being a musician in the true sense of the term and, in fact, apart from the voice, all the instrumental work is entrusted to Dario Laletta. But, as everything that lately comes from Sicily in the field of rock and metal, you can expect something special and unconventional: Hertz Kankarok with these three songs confirms it, offering a compendium of music at times exciting and going to explore the different sound spectrums of metal and beyond. If Our Will Injection seems to be an ideal cross between King Crimson and djent (a genre of which it is not difficult to find a hypothetical genesis listening to the three Fripp’s records of the eighties) but with the enormous merit of keeping always in the foreground the melodic aspect, keeping away from the sterile technicality, We Are the Ghosts moves the bar on darker and evocative sounds, expressing a robust prog metal with wide gothic nuances. So far nothing to complain about the two songs, embellished by the undoubted executive talent of Laletta, well supported by a vocal interpretation many varied and personal by Kankarok. In my opinion, however, the real fulcrum of the work is the final Occvlta Plaga Inferorvm, a song that effectively encapsulates not only the thought of the author on religious issues, conveyed in Italian through a magnificent text, but manages to synthesize admirably different aspects of the sound, which gradually becomes darker and more reflective, enclosing in one stroke the gothic doom of the typical Italian school (with flashes of the unforgettable Cultus Sanguine) and songwriting impulses that can not help but refer to the illustrious fellow-countryman Franco Battiato (difficult not to make this comparison when Kankarok sings “…in this infamous era of acquiescence …“). In good substance, Livores contains twenty-five minutes of music of enormous qualitative thickness and, above all, very personal, sign that a less conventional artistic approach can often bring delicious fruits, just for a minor propensity to abuse consolidated schemes. The ep has been diffused by now a year ago and, although it has been generally received with a certain favor, I have the feeling that it has not always been given that even greater prominence that it would have deserved. It remains only to enjoy this excellent example of musical creativity, waiting for the mysterious Hertz Kankarok to show up again, maybe with a long distance work.

2015 – Independent