(written by Islander)
Frequent visitors to our site (and other people equally intelligent and tasteful) will know the names Thecodontion and Clactonian. If you don’t know those names, you can find out why I think you should know them by plowing through the volumes of words we’ve spilled about their music (collected here and here, respectively). Both bands are the brainchildren of Italian musician G.E.F., joined with other very talented friends in each group.
Now we have another name you need to know, another brainchild of G.E.F. This one is Veia. Under the banner of Veia G.E.F. is the vocalist and lyricist, joined here by bassist extraordinaire G.D. (also from Thecodontion) and exceptionally talented people from Svart Vinter and Veil of Conspiracy on drums and guitars.
Unlike Thecodontion and Clactonian, Veia is predominantly a vehicle for black metal. The band’s members have been at work on a debut album to be entitled Vacal, and they expect the recording sessions to be completed later this year. But to help introduce Veia to listeners, G.E.F. decided to release two “raw excerpts” from the album this month through his new-ish label Prehistoric Sounds, and we have premiere streams of both songs for you today.
G.E.F. has explained that he actually founded Veia in 2011 (it was his first music project), in an early post-adolescent attempt to create black metal after discovering Norwegian black metal a few years before. Now he has revived it, still inspired by the early Scandinavian black metal scene, but also by elements of ’90s Greek black metal.
Thematically, Veia is focused on the Etruscans, an ancient pre-Roman civilization that inhabited the area where G.E.F. grew up (“center Italy,” he says, “precisely north of Rome, even though Etruscans also spawned in other close regions like Umbria and Tuscany”). With respect to the songs you’re about to hear (with lyrics in Italian), he has explained:
These songs (titled “Tuchulcha” and “Il ritorno di Tuchulcha“) focus on the figure of Tuchulcha, a demon from the underworld in Etruscan mythology. In particular, the track “Il ritorno di Tuchulcha” is inspired by “L’Etrusco uccide ancora” (English: “The Etruscan Kills Again”), a cult B-movie from 1972 by director Armando Crispino.
With some help from online translation tools, we can say that the lyrics of the first song (“Tuchulcha“) introduce us to the underworld realm of the dead, a hideous place where the demon Tuchulcha reigns supreme over the torment of the lost souls, whom he gleefully tortures. The song’s narrator is one of those haunted and harrowed victims, wondering how he could have wasted his life and fallen into this hellscape of horrors.
In line with the song’s lyrical theme, “Tuchulcha” is both haunting and violent. The prominent bass notes vividly throb in ways that convey hopelessness, but also cavort as if summoning the terrible ecstasies of the demon lord. They’re surrounded by raw, high-toned guitars that elaborately boil and writhe, as if manifesting both the agonies of the tortured and the viciousness of the torturer. The drum performance is a pulse-puncher and a head-rattler, while the echoing vocals vent the words in terrifying snarls and caustic screams.
The combined effect of all these contributions is to create spinning madness and eerie otherworldliness, feelings of desperation and pain, and the gloom of endless oppression.
The second song, “Il ritorno di Tuchulcha“, the one inspired by Crispino’s movie, has a different lyrical protagonist. This one invokes the demon, praying for his return to bestow vengeance upon the desecrators of ancient Etruscan tombs, to bring death to a modern world that no longer honors the old cults.
Musically (as we’ve written previously), the song is fast, frenetic, and uncanny. The drums gallop and pop, the bass again prominently and mercurially bubbles, the piercing lead guitar strangely but elegantly ripples and swirls through poisonous sonic mists, and acid-bathed shrieks again flash their vitriol from some deep crypt.
The music sounds dismal and distraught, but also furious, and very much like an ancient incantation. The nimble, prog-minded bass performance is an unorthodox element in what might once more could be summed up as raw black metal, and it’s so ecstatic that it makes a startling contrast with the cold crypt-dwelling creepiness of the sizzling riffage and spectral leads.
The whole song actually sounds unorthodox, like a supernatural bridge across millennia, which is part of what makes it so enticing. Both songs leave us eager to hear the Vacal album when it is completed.
VEIA is:
G.E.F. – vocals, lyrics, design, layout
G.D. – bass
E.M. – guitars
L.G. – guitars
L.T. – drums
Credits: Bass and vocals were recorded at Le Trombe degli Angeli Studio in Rome. Guitars were recorded at Mørk Natt Studio in Tivoli, Italy. Drums were recorded at Bit Music Studio in Rome.
Prehistoric Sounds will release the demo on May 16th on white pro-duplicated cassette tapes, limited to 30 hand-numbered copies, as well as digitally.
PRE-ORDER:
Cassette: https://prehistoricsounds.bandcamp.com/album/tuchulcha-il-ritorno-di-tuchulcha-promo-mmxxv
Digital: https://veia.bandcamp.com/album/tuchulcha-il-ritorno-di-tuchulcha-promo-mmxxv