Day: August 9, 2017

First long-distance test for Theta, solo project of Lombard musician Mattia Pavanello, after the release of an ep entitled LXXV that had anticipated the sound coordinates of one of the most disturbing realities in the field of Italian music. Pavanello is known for his militancy in bands such as Heavenfall and Furor Gallico, as well as for an illustrious collaboration with Folkstone, so it is somewhat surprising to find him struggling with a sound as antithetical as the funeral doom with drones and experimental traits offered in Obernuvshis’. Despite being totally instrumental in nature, if we make an exception for the sampled voices that follow each other in the various tracks, the album has none of the drawbacks that often accompany this choice: here the music takes the scene with decision and the risk of seeing it slip away without leaving any trace is averted: Mattia proves to know perfectly the genre without following its coordinates slavishly, allowing his inspiration to channel itself from time to time in different streams that see the preponderant funeral component, but enriched and integrated by ambient, drone, sludge and some veins of post metal. After all, Theta was born as a project able to channel the different compositional impulses of Pavanello towards a dark sound, without flashes of positivity but not devoid of a good melodic impact: in just over three quarters of an hour, Obernuvshis’ manages to shake minds numb from listening to records produced on autopilot, thanks to solutions not at all obvious. As already mentioned, however, the strength of an album like this is its being listenable, while being in fact built on a scaffolding designed to highlight the dark side of existence: in this regard, our album avoids to take refuge in the crypticity often end in itself of the noise, to try instead to create an involvement, even emotional, but it is clear that the usability of which we mentioned earlier is closely related to the musical background of those who approach the work of Theta, aimed primarily at fans of doom from the proven familiarity with the genre. As it often happens in these cases, the subdivision into tracks leaves time to find, so that the album should be listened to and dissected as a whole, with qualitative peaks found in all episodes until the beautiful epilogue of Concrete And Foundation, where Pavanello shows his skills as a guitarist with a painful and inspired solo that closes in the best way a work of great value.

2016 – independent