In this musically fertile autumn of 2017 reveals what, probably, will be credited as one of the best Italian albums released during the year in the field of rock metal. The Romans Seventh Genocide, with their second full length Toward Akina, reach surprising heights of lyricism, bringing to the highest levels their blackgaze that becomes, depending on the point of view from which it is observed, a sweetened version of depressive or a shoegaze partially cloaked in black metal veins. It is a pleasure, however, to find in this band two musicians like Rodolfo Ciuffo (vocals, bass, acoustic guitar) and Stefano Allegretti (guitar) in which we had come across a few years ago when, with the moniker Forgotten Thought, gave to the presses an interesting ep as Grey Aura: That project was not followed by going to place as a sort of parenthesis within the activity of Seventh Genocide, which already existed for some years, but showed the symptoms of how these young and inspired musicians could give in the years to come, as in fact happened. Toward Akina is a virtual journey that Seventh Genocide, completed by Jacopo Gianmaria Pepe (guitar) and Valerio Primo (drums), induce us to make going to dissect through various stages aspects that transcend the real life, focusing on broader existential designs of spiritual matrix: the sound that comes out is a perfect mix between the most tangible extreme roughness and the ethereal post-rock component, which sometimes borders on progressive territories if not psychedelic in pinkfloydian share (particularly in Life Is Poison). For almost an hour the band from Rome caresses, strikes and excites in a way that is anything but predictable, taking the lesson of the first Alcest and Agalloch, of the more atmospheric and less desperate depressive, as well as of a progressive substrate that emerges from time to time with the appearance of intense and elegant guitar solutions. Describing Toward Akina following the chronology of the tracks would not do full justice to a work that should be listened to getting the right amount of time to reflect, being penetrated by this beautiful flow of notes, even if it is difficult not to consider as the true fulcrum of the album the long Immense As The Universe, which wanting to exemplify represents the summa of composition and poetry of Seventh Genocide. Toward Akina goes beyond the genre fences, making unnecessary the need to stick somewhere any label containing the prefix post: here we find light and darkness, love and death, disenchantment and amazement, with all that goes to make up a kaleidoscope of emotions to which you can not and you should not escape.

2017 – Wooaaargh