2011 is an eternity ago. Bargone had not yet retreated from society to a haunted mansion on the slopes of a forbidding cliff, constantly shrouded in mists, and he did not disdain responding to readers in person. To a question from reader “fragolina86” (her lowercase) about the most black metal place in Sicily, our tyrannical diarch (Ciccio is not the good oneis the pragmatic one) He answered: “This year I was on Etna and it’s an absurd place. A gigantic volcano, completely blackwhich continuously throws fire and flames and stands menacingly over one of the largest cities in Italy, with hundreds of thousands of people who get up every morning, eat their arancino and check whether this gigantic thing throws fire or not, with the same tranquility with which the rest of the world looks out the window to check if it is raining.“ If you want, I leave you to read Barg’s old piece for his travel advice for Sicily, which for me is more convincing than many agencies (the strength of the arguments). I was interested in the incipit and making an aside: it will be black metal, as a place, but also irremediably doom. This is also to introduce the third album from Catania Hauntedtrue darlings in our house since Tola brought them to the attention of the editorial staff and readers (I, a reader at the time, discovered them just like that). Six years have passed since the second and valuable one Dayburner. An important hiatus. There’s enough time for water to flow under the bridge in six years. Even a lot of lava has time to reach the valley, the sea. What happened in the meantime to the band led by Cristina Chimirri I don’t know for sure (there’s also a fucking Covid involved, speaking of calamities). The fact is that we find them now with a new album, Stare at Nothingand a revolutionized education.
To be precise, the drummer and the two original guitarists have been replaced. Which, however a band that is based on guitars and plays a genre that is based on guitars, it is a delicate passage. But nothing we need to worry about because the six strings (so no longer twelve) are now in the hands of newcomer Kim Crowley. Of which Metal Archives does not report any precedent, not even unrelated to our music. She is a newcomer, therefore, but one who fits into the sound of the Catania band with a certainty and with results that are surprising. Another entry, the drummer Luca Strano, very rocky, while alongside Cristina remained the bassist Frank Tudisco, also a live musician of the Schizo (no shit) and ex Sinoath. The result is a new quartet which however shows total cohesion. And let me return to the evidence of newcomer Crowley. If he is a stage name, he is well chosen, if he is not it is even more perfect. Because consider that Thelema, the abbey, is after all just on the other side of Etna. Because his guitar fits into the sound of the Haunted without distorting it, but bringing it to a greater level of completeness and personality. I’ll tell you, if until recently the Haunted were the best disciples in the wake of Windhandby detachment, now it’s official that the Haunted are just the Haunted. Of course, the music is more or less the same, but you feel that it flows more confidently, freer, less bound by the international doom plot.
Take the first song (after the intro), as well as the first single: Catamorph. Take the mammoth riff, dripping lava. Take the wave arpeggios of the mystical verse. Take the beautiful melody that unfolds little by little. Take the very heavy blow of the break and then Crowley’s two solos. Especially the second, a simple, melodic, clever solo. Taken all this together, in five minutes and forty minutes of song, and you convince yourself that even if the reference is still present and the original inspiration comes from there, today the band has reached a level of maturity and personality that makes the Haunted at least one of the best Italian metal and doom names, at least, but which will certainly gain them exposure abroad too. An exposure they deserve.
Now, Catamorph it’s perhaps the best song on the new album, but it’s in pretty damn good company. Already the next one, Garden of Evilalso previously teased, plays on the insertion of a post-punk sensibility onto an otherwise monolithic stoner/doom plot. But the cover of Stare at Nothing does it only make me think of Bauhaus? The logic is no longer just psych doom, linear, with the riffs straight to repeating themselves and repeating themselves in search of asceticism. Dynamics are introduced obliquelike the oblique riff of Malevolentanother peak of the discussion.
And don’t be afraid. Malevolent it’s literally broken in two by a stoner doom riff of considerable heaviness, so if you’re looking for blows and slaps, dear friends, there are some, indeed. The esoteric aspect, however, musically speaking, can now also exploit other dynamics. The melody, however, remains the territory of Cristina Chimirri’s voice. Melody that dialogues with the walls of the new guitarist’s intransigent guitars and Todisco’s threatening bass (how beautiful is the dialogue between the two right in the break and in the riff of Malevolent) and with the solemnity of the drum scores. The effect clearly highlights the diaphanous substance of the vocal lines, though certain ripples appear to materialize as completely malignantfor example, in the final Waratah Blossom. Yet those of Stare at Nothing they are songs. Actually, take it right Stare at Nothing, the song. Which is led by a riff from ABC of drugged doom and which then opens with the suspension of a grunge refrain, magnificently grunge, for guitar and melody.
Therefore, the soul, the catalyst center of the group’s energies, remains Chimirri. In the’interview with our Tola, Todisco gave a somewhat evasive answer on the topic of esotericism. Cristina’s lyrics are not even available on the CD that arrived a few days ago, so I don’t know anything for sure, but to me this Stare at Nothing it seems to go deeper, a little further below the surface. It would almost be like asking them again, trying to extort something more. Because, I repeat, at the end Waratah Blossom it gives you chills. It causes a chill to rise that has nothing to do with the temperature felt under the shadow of a black volcano. It makes me want to listen again. And in fact I’m listening to it again and again. I could stay on it for a few more days and find better words, but I think it’s better not to waste any more time and advise you to immediately dive into listening to a record that I swear, we will continue to listen to, letting it get under our skin a little more each time. , until we are definitively bewitched by it. (Lorenzo Centini)
