Day: January 14, 2018

The Campania’s Malvento is one of the bands belonging to the Italian black metal scene still born in the last century, so in this case it is legitimate to speak of a reality tested and formed by experienced musicians. Such a long career has provided a quantitatively average production, considering that Pneuma is only the fourth full length but it comes seven years after the previous one. If before I talked about black metal, it must be dutifully pointed out that, with this work, a sort of definitive detachment from the genre is made, at least in its most canonical version, completing a process already started with Oscuro Esperimento Contro Natura. Pneuma unfolds as if it were a flow driven by an obscure esoteric vein, during which the vocalist Zim recites with a malicious whisper texts in Italian of considerable impact and depth, resting on a sound fabric that admirably blends dark wave and dark ambient giving the whole a melodic sense capable of making a difference. Wanting to make a parallelism with another national reality returned to activity after a long silence, in the work of Malvento we find several points of encounter, at least at the level of conceptual approach, with the latest The Magik Way, but in my opinion the Neapolitan trio proves to be superior because it is able to cause a greater emotional involvement. In this regard, I believe that this result is achieved thanks to the dark component that leads, for example, a magnificent song like Night to seem a hypothetical version of The Cure strengthened and malevolent Pornography; all this is alternated with ambient cues (with a phenomenal Vortex) that become the ideal soundtrack of an esoteric ritual. We must not hide behind the false modesty denying that in Italy there is the greatest concentration of bands capable of putting into music in a credible way such issues, perpetuating a tradition that comes from afar and that embraces across the board in various genres: Malvento today ideally collect this witness carrying it proudly along the stretch of path assigned to them, with the knowledge of those who know perfectly well that this road can still be long and harbinger of other works of excellent quality as Pneuma.

2017 – Third I Rex