John, The Void‘s first album proves to be yet another alienating delivery of a music scene that doesn’t want to surrender to sonic homologation and banality. The post metal sludge of this relatively new band, with a self-titled ep under its belt that was very well received at the time of its release in 2014, while moving along the already well-established coordinates of the genre, shows a freshness and intensity that cannot leave you indifferent. The result is amplified and embellished by having combined all this with a concept, perhaps not brand new for the themes treated (partially taking up some elements of Matrix), but that can not leave indifferent, like everything that photographs the inanity of man in front of his destiny, whether he chooses to abandon himself to immobility, or try to escape it by moving in a confused and disjointed way, to return ineluctably to the starting point. II is an album that gives off a constant tension, even when the sound becomes more rarefied preluding to accesses of anger compressed by a latent despair; at the level of stylistic coordinates John, The Void take all that is good in the genre has produced in recent times, putting a lot of their own intensity, since the remaining aspects of the possible margins of maneuver are not so wide. Four long tracks, interspersed with a shorter ambient track, are the turnover of a group already able to express themselves on high levels although it is the first test on long distance: this argues in favor of further room for improvement, found especially in a greater sense of synthesis, a gift that, however, is lacking in most of the bands that compete in the field. There is almost nothing to object, however, on compositions that make perfect a sense of alienation that is placed, even musically, between the hint of tragedy of doom and the rancorous disappointment of hardcore, although the band from Pordenone seems to lean more towards the first of the two forms, as beautifully manifested with the final Season, the ideal seal of an album to be savored and sip with care.

2016 – Drown Within Records