Day: March 3, 2023

After three full lengths published under Apneica moniker (the last of which Tra rocce e cortecce, in 2018) Alessandro Seghene returns with this new project of his called Littu, a Sardinian word meaning ‘dense forest’. On this occasion, the sound of Apneica’s death doom finds a further evolution in a melodic sense, although it was already heavily contaminated with post-metal and post-rock, but in this case, the tendency is also accentuated by the use of the always excellent Ignazio Simula’s clean singing in both Italian and Sardinian; it must be said that this expedient is not the first in the metal sphere, recalling that even the Germans Nauthik recorded a good funeral doom album a few years ago sung precisely in the island idiom, but it should be noted that the resulting musicality is always far superior to the dialects spoken in the rest of Italy. Accolti da antiche radici is an album that grows a lot with listening, as at first a certain rarefaction of sound may leave somewhat perplexed those who expected a probable replication of Apneica’s sound, but in reality, the common traits can always be found; in fact, in addition to the hand of the composer and the singer’s own voice, what continues to make the difference is the poetics that is inserted into an album that is very deep in terms of content, with Seghene always demonstrating his particular attention to the naturalistic aspects already successfully explicated in Tra rocce e cortecce. What emerges most, however, is the reference to rural and ancestral realities that modernity is increasingly compressing, finding a strong resistance in the areas where tradition and a sense of community are most deeply rooted. In my opinion, this first release under the name Littu raises the qualitative bar even higher on the part of the Sardinian musician, through the expression of a peculiar and rich sound, always balanced between some harshness of a metal nature and the intimist folk veins that finds its ideal synthesis in a splendid song like Elighe. Even if the birth of Littu could mean the end of Apneica at the same time, the continuity between the two projects would still remain sensitive.

2023 – Independent