[Reviewed by: Damiano Lanzi]
Despite its title, that sounds like “Noise Avant-garde”, this album is probably the less noisy in Corazzata Valdemone’s discography, and on the other hand one of the most experimental. Don’t worry, the noise is still there, but it’s not meant as a structural element, in unbeatable walls of sound; here the noise articulates around ambient sounds, it modulates in melodic and rhythmic acceptations.
“Invicta” where menacing strings are encircled by the synthesized sounds of a bombed city and the martial “Mother of Death” are good examples of this process. Every song has a defined sonic direction, making “Avanguardia Rumorista” an eclectic and various album. You can constantly recognize the author’s will to juxtapose ancient traditions and heritages of the past to modern sounds, allowing the listener to travel into expressionistic soundscapes and sinister atmospheres.
So while “A New Force for an Old Ideal” is a well made martial industrial piece with some neofolk-inspired guitars, another essential feature of this record is the recovery of traditional musical scores as the two rearranged funeral marches “Ich Hatt’ Einen Kameraden” (written in the XIX Century by German poet Ludwig Uhland, with music by Friedrich Silcher) and the Sicilian “Marching for God”. The first track “Gorizia” is another jump into a tormented past: “O Gorizia tu sei Maledetta” is indeed one of the most controversial Italian chants of the First World War. It describes the tragic battle of Gorizia, where more than 50.000 soldiers perished in just two days, from the resentful perspective of the mass of people sent to die to defend the interests of a few rich people that didn’t even care about their suffering. That’s why this chant is considered anti-patriotic, even defeatist by some.
As you may well imagine, this time either Gabriele Fagnani doesn’t give up his passion for provocation and totalitarian aesthetics. The lyrics of “Il Testamento” are taken from the testament of Giorgio Almirante, an Italian politician who took part in the last phase of the fascist dictatorship, the Republic of Salò, and after the war founded the MSI (Movimento Sociale Italiano), a far right-wing party. The tape recorder effect speech is surrounded by metallic clangors and deaf echoes of a really unsettling outcome. “Eternal Faith” brings together samples of the Third Reich period and ends with some fragments of the shocking farewell letter written by Magda Goebbels to her son, at the time prisoner of war in North Africa, where she explains her intention to kill her children and spare them a future without national socialism. Synthetic snare drums and mephitic boiling sounds are the soundtrack to this delirious, hallucinated speech.
Corazzata Valdemone – Avanguardia Rumorista
Ufa Muzak, UFA63
CD/Digital 2013
Santa Sangre 