Alchemist
Spiritech

Lately in Bologna, where I live, I've been hearing my friends and classmates using the word "brenso" more and more. A term that, in the Bolognese slang of young people, means "something short but intense."

If I had to, therefore, choose something that perfectly embodies the concept of brensosity (or brensaggine?) I would choose this album by the Alchemist, "Spiritech", released in the now distant 1997 and unfortunately it went somewhat unnoticed by critics and the public and still receives much less recognition than it truly deserves. After all, it's no secret that the Italian metal criticism moves at a sloth's pace, always tending to focus on the usual 3-4 bands that even the walls of your house know, while abroad, highly acclaimed bands are making the rounds and will only arrive in Italy centuries later.

So, as we were saying, if I had to choose something truly "brenso" I would opt for this album, for two very simple reasons:

- it is short (well, it lasts an hour, not very little, but it's still an hour, not two whole days);

- it is intense, very intense, because the atmospheres and melodies contained in this album have an uncommon expressiveness that will leave a mark on you for better or worse.

The Alchemist offers a progressive metal with strong psychedelic/spatial hues, sprinkled with electronic and experimental touches, so much so that they define themselves as a "Space Metal Band", and indeed you can't help but travel with your mind when you put on one of their albums, dreaming of distant planets still unknown to man, or even parallel dimensions where anything and everything can happen. In short, a lot of room is left for imagination, and the result is truly amazing.

Stylistically, the Australian band is much closer to the sound of Tool or Voivod than to the prog metal of Dream Theater or Symphony X: theirs is an elegant, sober, incisive sound, which doesn't resort to typical genre artifices, so if you hope to find 30-minute guitar solos and more, you'll be quite disappointed.

"Spiritech", considered by many to be the band's masterpiece, contains 9 very fine tracks that never bore and maintain high tension throughout its 61 minutes in length.

"Chinese Whispers" is the opening track, and it is considered by many as one of the group's compositional peaks; a piece that begins with a simple yet very effective melodic line, over which Adam Agius's clean vocals rise, occasionally giving space to brief distorted screams. In the middle part of the song, there's room for a magnificent ambient break, evocative, deep, and abysmal, then returning in the finale with the initial melody.

The following are the magnificent "Road To Ubar", with a structure quite similar to the opening track, and "Staying Conscious", a track with a spatial and apocalyptic pathos that will make you sweat cold. The fourth track, "Beyond Genesis", is perhaps the one most influenced by Pink Floyd, with an intro featuring bird songs and filtered sounds, then flowing into truly inspired and very "toolian" riffing alternated with arpeggios reminiscent of 70s prog.

In "Inertia", the pace is accelerated, recovering the thrash roots that were the backbone of the band's first two raw and violent works, namely "Jar Of Kingdom" and "Lunasphere", where the sound was still in development. And what about the concluding "Figments", with that oriental and mysterious intro that flows into a continuous up and down of emotions for all of its 11 minutes of duration? It really feels like falling into a state of hypnosis; it's like being intoxicated by the melody of a snake charmer or enchanted by the intriguing gaze of a beautiful "dark" looking woman. Or more simply, it's a journey, a journey toward the depths of space from which you will hardly want to return.

"Spiritech" thus marks the compositional peak of a rich discography boasting many finely crafted albums for a band that, after more than 15 years of activity, shows no signs of faltering and continues to produce albums each more beautiful than the last, as demonstrated by the recent "Tripsis", released this fall under the Relapse label. Make it yours.