At The Soundawn
Shifting

THE REVIEW

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Soul that takes possession of the body. 

Psychedelia, post-metal, alternative rock. Different directions, small/large cues to glimpse and understand something new. Delicacies never savored fade into hints of jazz, in the despair and anger of hardcore. Emanation of a miracle materialized by a livid outburst of anger that, with immense relief, extinguishes. Changing rhythms, inconsistent beats, a pulse that becomes a startle. Passionate vocalizations first set in pain and then soothed in the joy of peace, in the charm that rises from everyday horizons. Horizons that are fluid, unpredictable, welcoming.

On their second release, the Modenese At The Soundawn masterfully expand their musical boundaries by creating a nebulous field within which planets collide, mutate, grow, and expand until they crumble and disappear in the breath of time.

''Shifting'', released at the beginning of 2010 by Lifeforce, is a positively dispersive work, chameleonic yet never disjointed. Metal and non-metal are fused with superb command of their means, through often compelling daring, surpassing the canonical interchange between the soft acoustic phase and the impetuous electric passages (''Mudra'', which fades at its peak only to start anew in an entirely new guise, represents the most fitting example) and often resorting to ambient lightening (the exquisite sax inspirations in ''Caofedian'', the ethereal relaxation of ''Drifting Lights'') where a pronounced passion for nuances emerges, which have little to do with post-metal, the genre in which, superficially, they are categorized.

Thus, what at first seems to be a reproduction of a musical creed so dear to the Isis (and the cover indebted to ''In The Absence Of Truth'' certainly doesn't help to dispel such prejudices), is soon shattered by the vitality, polychromy, and maturity that these five Emilian guys have been able to unleash, even individually, within this ''Shifting''. A marked expressive freedom best rendered by a practically perfect production (in Studio 73 of Ravenna) and by an admirable, unusual instrumental versatility (wisely manifested by abundant use of pedals, guitar interweavings, precise sampling, trumpets, and ethnic instruments unknown to me like the tabla and the bouzouki) that bring At The Soundawn straight into those rare Italian realities worthy of being supported without ifs and buts by every fellow countryman, all the more by those who maintain that the most accomplished musical art is that which breaks its own barriers by renewing itself.