(written by Islander)
On May 8th the Italian metal band Ivoire will release their debut album Uragano. It began a long process of taking shape more than four years ago through a series of personal reflections written by the band’s founder Nicolò Lenoci, and then gradually evolved as he sought musical expressions for those ideas — musical expressions that ultimately moved between post-metal, sludge, and black metal influences.
When the time arrived for fully fleshing out the music and recording it, Nicolò (performing guitars and bass) was joined by vocalist Antonio Caggese, drummer Giovanni Solazzo (Turangalila, Duocane), and some guests whose contributions we’ll identify a bit later. Afterward, the band found its definitive line-up for live performances, with members we’ll also identify below.
Here is how Nicolò introduces the album:
Giving thoughts a concrete form, that’s basically what Uragano is.
Musically speaking, Uragano sits between post-metal and black metal and moves between different moods: each track reflects a different state of mind, from melancholy to anger. The writing process occurred in a dark moment of my life, and listening to a lot of atmospheric sludge metal, to bands like Amenra, Neurosis and Dirge, was definitely a turning point in the way the tracks were born.
I think it’s an honest snapshot of a mind in motion, somewhere between thought and feeling, and it reflects a lot on the songs and the live concept.
The album itself — which we’re now premiering in full — is very much a reflection of a mind in motion, a perpetual pendulum swing of mood and sound that creates tension and release, and that arcs among episodes of introspection, fury, and haunting bleakness. At times, the music is ghostly and grieving; at times it also shakes the ground like earthquakes or explodes in novas of harrowing and even blinding intensity.
The album includes five songs, all of them longer than average, ranging from 8 1/2 minutes to more than 12. It’s that longest song, “Le Catene dell’Estro“, that opens the album, and one might think that a risky choice (much like the cover art). On the other hand, one might believe Ivoire decided not to hide away their ambitions until a later point, but to make them plain right away.
That song begins with an elaborately layered and even elegant overture, but it’s a soul-sinking experience, an eerie and unsettling experience that seems a reflection of inner turmoil despite its slow pacing. Those opening minutes are almost hypnotic — which just makes a sudden ensuing change even more shocking.
When the change comes, the music dramatically crashes, abrasively groans, and sends wailing sonic lights up into the stratosphere. The bass sounds enormous as it vividly throbs and undulates; the vocals also wail — and scream in torment; sonic fire and heat lightening flash high above; the riffing generates boiling turbulence; the drums provide a cracking beat — something to hold onto in the midst of the near-overpowering intensity of everything else.
Another sudden change occurs. The rhythm section briefly vanish; vibrating chords gently shimmer; strummed strings glisten; and the music becomes not only ethereal but also steeped in sorrow. It’s mesmerizing, even beautiful, and the rhythm section’s gradual return doesn’t distract from that.
Yet Ivoire again do what they did at the song’s outset — stunning the listener with another sudden detonation of massive heaviness, scarring abrasion, and soaring filaments of shrill melody, albeit with rocking beats to hold onto again.
The other four songs also exhibit the kind of dramatic push and pull of intensity demonstrated in that monumental opener. In those songs Ivoire continue to cast haunting and hypnotic musical spells and then, without warning, to brutally crush them — though even in those massively heavier moments the repeating motifs become mesmeric.
In the more lonely, introspective, and gentle passages they make good use of channel separation. In the heavier phases, you might think the bass is causing your bones to throb, and that the guitars are creating riotous celestial visions or swarming like hornets. At carefully chosen moments, the drums take off from their usual steady pace and blast away.
The vocals appear at carefully chosen moments too, rather than being a non-stop presence. Which was a good decision, because the screams are terrorizing, harsh enough to leave scars as they lay bare their own scars for all to witness.
The one song in which the vocals change is “Chimera“. There, the band’s guest Michael Anthony Foti (Die Sünde) provides gritty and gasping but subdued spoken words beneath an array of splendidly gleaming and pastoral melodies — pensive phases that are followed by tremendous (and tremendously grim) musical detonations capped by vividly glittering tremolo’d chords and eventually by a union of vocalists singing and shrieking their hearts out (and breaking ours in the process).
Another guest appears in the album’s final song, the towering and near-apocalyptic “Sotto la Cenere“. In that track, which also includes spoken-word vocals as well as blood-letting screams, Fabrizio Cioce (Zolfo) adds a slow, wistful, and powerfully seductive saxophone solo in the song’s soft final phase. That provides an interesting and unexpected way to conclude the record (a drifting away), but it works surprisingly well.
And with that, we’ll now turn you over to the full stream of Uragano
CREDITS:
• Recording, mixing, mastering: Andrea Lenoci
• Artwork: Camilla Di Bella Vecchi
• Music and lyrics: Nicolò Lenoci
• Saxophone on “Sotto la Cenere”: Fabrizio Cioce (Zolfo)
• Vocals and lyrics on “Chimera”: Michael Anthony Foti (Die Sünde)
Current IVOIRE Line-up:
Antonio Caggese – Vocals
Nicolò Lenoci – Guitar
Sebastiano Liso – Guitar
Cipo – Drums
Francesco Bizzoca – Bass
Uragano comes recommended for fans of: Amenra, Cult of Luna, Dirge, and Year of No Light. To order the album and to follow Ivoire, see the links below.
https://ivoire.bandcamp.com/album/uragano
https://www.instagram.com/ivoire.postmetal/