Afterhours
Hai paura del buio?

THE REVIEW

I am well aware that the album I am reviewing is already present in the substantial Debaser archives. I am conscious of that, but I hope you will allow me to spend a few words on it. Because this is one of those works, for me as for many other people, that can be comfortably defined as "absolute", complete, perfect in their composition. However, take note: you are faced with an album composed of no less than 19 songs. It might be easy to think, even without listening to the album, that it contains some tracks a bit below par, decidedly inferior compared to others that instead make up the most important part, hence, one might think that the work in question contains more than one so-called "filler track." As far as I am concerned, nothing could be more wrong. "Hai paura del buio?" is an album in which fragments of hardcore, folk, electronic, psychedelia, jazz, grunge, and even pop coexist, yet it never gives the impression of being confused or scattered and instead manages to captivate with the class it displays in virtually every single moment.

Manuel Agnelli is a character of a certain stature, a refined and mocking musician, cultured and visceral at the same time, capable of composing surreal and poetic lyrics not without a good dose of existential harshness, guitarist Xabier Iriondo knows how to draw from his guitar any sound he finds suitable for the atmosphere of the songs, and Giorgio Prette is a drummer who can don the attire of any musical genre without a hitch. For this reason, an album that includes extremely lively and pungent tracks on the verge of the absurd like "Dea" and "Sui giovani d'oggi ci scatarro su" (with strong hardcore riffs, screaming to exhaustion, and epileptic rhythms) and other calmer but decidedly more surreal and mysterious ones like "Senza finestra" and "Come vorrei" (filled with bizarre vocal effects, electronic hallucinations, and paranoid lyrics) can work best without inconsistencies. In between these two vertically opposed ends, there is everything: Nirvana-like grunge in the exciting "Male di miele," atmospheric and melancholic rock in the poignant "Rapace", sparkling pop in "Voglio una pelle splendida" (another qualitative peak of the album), and even extremely atypical numbers like the shadowy jazz-rock of "Terrorswing" and the Melvins-like nightmare of "Questo pazzo pazzo mondo di tasse", complete with pachydermic cadence, martial and menacing violin, truculent guitars, and filtered vocals. The lyrics expand Agnelli's range of action without taking too much distance from the topics handled in the previous "Germi": love examined (and deformed in a surreal manner) in its most contradictory and painful facets, jealousy, caustic and fierce social satire, hints of misogyny, and the pure, unrestrained love for linguistic games. All condensed into a visionary poetics that manages to merge sweetness and violence, hatred and melancholy effortlessly.

But the real key of interpretation in which the album should be analyzed, in my opinion, is the following: "Hai paura del buio?" feeds on reality, absorbs its most miasmatic and carcinogenic particles, but presents them back to the listener in the form of dreamlike visions. In other words: everything that constitutes the backbone of the album, from Agnelli's lyrics and vocal excursions to Iriondo and Prette's sound painting, is enveloped in a dreamlike patina, of unreality, of hypnotic and irreverent surrealism. The cut-up and free association of the lyrics, the psychedelic nuances (the intro of the beautiful "Pelle," the title track, brief but significant instrumental) the background voices (the disconnected dialogues in "Simbiosi," the heartbreaking screams in "Terrorswing") and the continuous musical zapping to which the listener is subjected during the absorption of this work are elements that highlight the subconscious and schizoid nature of the album: the darkness is the soul lost in its own torments, in its own desperate abyss of suffering while it rejects the "foreign bodies" that afflict its existence: failed loves, sexual jealousy, and misogynistic anger in private, bourgeois hypocrisy, fashion rebellion, and the exhausting plasticity of the modern world in the public sphere. "Hai paura del buio?" is, therefore, an extremely painful and personal work, but what makes it a true masterpiece is the band's artistic vein, capable of shaping emotions into infinite different forms.

Those who are not yet familiar with Afterhours (don't make me hear such things, it would be a real pity...) could learn to appreciate them by listening to their 1995 debut entitled "Germi," and then continue discovering this incredible band by listening to the album in question.

Oh, you are warned, now you can no longer say that quality music in Italy is a mirage.