Day: October 7, 2019

If the band’s name is inspired by Sedna, the Inuit goddess of the sea, who is depicted on the cover of this self-titled debut, I like to think that there may also be a reference to the relatively recently discovered planetoid to which the same name has been attributed and which makes an elliptical orbit around the Sun, taking about 11,000 years. Sedna‘s music represents the fury of the goddess, but it is also nourished by the anxiety caused by the comparison between our limited stay on this planet and the almost eternal motion of all celestial bodies, in that endless space that every man is unable to imagine without being crushed by his own insignificance. The black sludge metal of the Romagna band is the ideal soundtrack of torment, of disorientation, with its outbursts alternating with moments of calm that almost always underlie a re-explosion of violent riffs, of merciless screams that go to break in our inability to understand all that is immeasurably greater than us. This is a record that won’t make you feel better and won’t be able to console you while you’re sick, it’s salt on the wounds, it’s a slow and insinuating pain that penetrates you in depth without leaving you any rest. Just when the nail driven into the flesh seems to have stopped in its attempt to make further space, in Life _ Ritual the voice of guest Stefania Pedretti arrives, a sort of Diamanda Galas taken to extremes, to plunge even the most disenchanted listener back into the darkest alienation. Apart from this episode, the three Sons (Of The Ocean, Of Isolation, Of The Ancients) are songs of an intensity that is difficult to describe, in which the rare melodic openings are the last vain breath for those who are drowning or the illusory vision of an oasis for those who are lost in the desert. Of course, this kind of music to some may appear repetitive and dead-end, but it’s all about having a clear idea of what you want to listen to from the bands dealing with these sounds; as far as I’m concerned, what the Cesena trio proposes with this first long-distance step, is exactly what you need to undertake an oppressive journey into the innermost depths, whether these are represented by oceanic abysses or by the much more perilous ones of the human psyche, it doesn’t matter: Sedna have wonderfully accomplished this task.

2014 – Drown Within Records