Florence these days is a tumult of images, concepts and colors that color the capital from the squares to the busy ring roads. They range from the electoral posters for the June local elections, with Eike Schmidt challenging the centre-left, to the Excelsior, a renowned venue in the San Donnino suburb, guilty of having hosted the comedian actress Valentina Nappico-star of the Italian comedy Think Sexy.
The succession of these images accompanied me a few kilometers from the Excelsior, in via Pistoiese, for the second 2024 edition of Florence Metal.
Accustomed to a place full of people of various ages and social backgrounds, thanks also to the driving force of influencers and acquired cultural phenomena such as Slug Gore and Fulcithe scenery western who appeared in front of me at the mouth of the desolate tunnel really stunned me. The long weekend of April 25th probably had an influence in this sense, and the rest of the missing turnout must have thought first of the excellent Nappi and only then of a very respectable bill.
Left behinddeath metal edition with Cripple Bastards, Hour of Penance and Gory Blister, Firenze Metal has returned to being that cauldron where you find everything, including what’s right for you. This time thrash metal was represented in a strongly Nineties style thanks to the Runover venues, which I saw for the fifth or sixth time I think, and the renewed Extreme by Tommy Massara and Tiziano Spigno, whom I hadn’t written about since Headbanging Forever. As for the rest of the lineup, I was certainly curious to see Diesanera again, after their winning contest on the outskirts of Florence complete with a torn ticket for the Wacken Open Air, and November. I hadn’t seen Carmelo Orlando’s band live for decades.
The Runover singer was warned that Valentina Nappi had taken theirs audience with his load of acting and irony, I headed to the station and waited for the dancing to begin. THE FALL AS A LEAP they were the classic group of Florence Metal on which I don’t bet a cent and which in the end surprise me, there is always at least one. They basically play nu metal, they have a DJ and references to Linkin Park they don’t stop there. With around ten years of experience, they pour it all onto the stage and put on a very good show. You can perceive little or nothing of that desire to overdo it that less famous groups have once they get on the Viper stage: continuous gags, energy bursts, poor dosage of strength. Sometimes I have the feeling that the pioneers of Firenze Metal feel the responsibility of having to prove something. Living up to the names that follow, for example. In this sense, Fall as Leap did not fall into the trap.
Ph: Marco Belardi
I was certain that the people of Livorno would fall into the trap DIESANERA, school bus group of the current edition. Let me refresh your memory: in the recent past the Speed Kills had filled the Viper Theater with relatives and friends and then dedicated a wonderful meme to me on social media which quoted Speed with Keanu Reeves and Bullock. In this case it was the Diesanera’s turn, who moved half the Tyrrhenian coast on site, so much so that, in replacement of the t-shirts, the merchandising some had started selling snappers and bream. The audience went into a frenzy just like the time the school bus went into action at Stony Pub: their concert is incredibly impressive and the thing that surprises me most about Diesanera is that they have the pieces. They boast a set list that never gets boring, you learn the choruses on the spot and you would hum them in the shower, and their metal, between Paradise Lost, Deathless Legacy, HIM, Alice in Chains-style counter-melodies and Rammstein-style arrogance, is always welcome back.
THE RUNOVER they overcame the shock of the news given to them at the beginning of the evening with energetic thrash metal and successful pieces such as The Wall And God Said. Both are excerpts from their latest EP released in March, an event considering that discographically speaking they had been missing for over a decade. Marco Biagioli is an incredible stage animal and first dribbles, then returns with rackets the loud curses that the vehement Florentine public throws at him. The music is perfectly in tune with that of Extrema, era The Positive Pressure especially, with a touch of Pantera added, and it’s consistent with that Italian thrash metal in vogue among the worshipers of In.si.dia and similar. It’s heavy without necessarily being fast, straight from the first half of the nineties. Probably the best concert of the whole evening, and certainly the best response from the audience together with that for Diesanera and Despite Exile.
Ph: Marco Belardi
Jei Doublerice, originally from Udine, goes on stage and starts acting like restless animals walking back and forth in a cage staring at a target. He’s wearing a plaid shirt that smells like Seattle and his group, i DESPITE EXILE, it’s starting to make a huge mess. They have the most technical and fastest drummer of the whole evening, Simone Cestari. They don’t lose a note or even a gram of the energy displayed at the beginning of the concert, and, if I have to nitpick by not caring about their coherence towards the genre addressed – the most extreme metalcore – the mixing is an ode to loudness war and therefore nothing is understood. The bassist is certainly capable, but I’m the one who imagines it while I watch him play, because I don’t hear him. The guitars sizzle like not even black metal and Doublerice dominates them with a simply perfect scream and growl. I’ve developed a theory about bands like this: on record they bust my balls, but live they’re impeccable and their music seems to come back to life. Therefore, what this loudness war whether it is a peculiarity or a martyrdom for forty-year-olds like myself, who grew up on bread and Morrisound Studios, is an enigma that I certainly won’t solve today.
The place is starting to fill up and there will be a total of four hundred people, much less than the six-seven hundred of previous editions, which is however an appreciable result considering that all the wankers in Florence are climbing the walls of the Excelsior sold out as if they were going to take the Bastille. Meanwhile, in the Viper Theater there is a man who looks like Lemmy Kilmister but he speaks Pisan.
Ph: Marco Belardi
THE NOVEMBER they start playing. Carmelo Orlando he runs the business without his brother and producer Giuseppe, it’s been like this for years now. The first ten minutes of their concert are characterized by my discomfort at noticing a decidedly lower energy and tone. I’m starting to think that they have nothing to do with this Firenze Metal and that the homogeneity of the Cripple Bastards edition would require a better anniversary. This isn’t the case: November starts with diesel, they don’t offer the best concert of the evening but their music is the one I enjoy the most. The classics place them all in the middle, My Starving Little Girl from Classic and immediately after Nostalgiaplatz. It’s my favorite album of theirs, followed by Twentieth century art. Sometimes I reverse the order of the two titles because I appreciate them. They take me straight back to that era when music was very popular Opeth, from which they differ considerably. I feel rather i Katatonia of the first progressive turn, and, listened to in retrospect, one can hear the dreamy atmospheres of the Alcest. Except that, at the time of the composition of those pieces I mentioned, Neige was still a minor, and would have ended up in hospital in the short space of an evening if only he had discovered Valentina Nappi, a talented Italian comic actress. Seeing Carmelo without Giuseppe is like seeing Tommy without Gianluca, and now I’m getting there.
The concert that closes the edition last of Firenze Metal, before, let’s be clear, something is announced for next October or so, it’s a good concert. It demonstrates the substantial difference between the experience and total craft of those who grew up between the Eighties and Nineties and the total energy of the bands that are stationed in the middle of the bill. Not that he EXTREMA they are tired, far from it: Tommy Massara doesn’t stay still for a second on stage, so much so that I am forced to lower the camera shutter speeds, as happened with Runover. The show focuses part of the lineup on the classic Tension at the Seams of 1993, the first. Or the second, if you count that fantastic EP released at the end of the Eighties.
Ph: Marco Belardi
In the lineup there is the best that composes it: Join Hands, Child o’Boogaow, Displaced, Modern Times, Life. There is MoneyTalksthere is The Call from the less remote past, so Tiziano Spigno can interpret something that already represented him on record. Spigno is a good singer, since he taught singing and holds the stage very well. But he is not a thrash metal singer in the strict sense. He’s one of those multifaceted, clean and powerful singers that you’d put anywhere from high-energy powerprog to hard rock. A bit like Russell Allen. This does not duly replace the one who was replaced, let’s be clear. As much as the two parties have taken two directions, i Mortado and this, both paths will lead back to the Extrema of Tommy Massara And Gianluca Perotti. I saw them with him for the first time, on the tour of Better Mad Than Dead and with him I cursed them at the time of the video clip with Article 31, or flattered them at the time of the frequent passages of MoneyTalks on TV. Not that the current Extrema are a substitute, on the contrary. But I can’t push that feeling away. (Marco Belardi)
