Black Tusk
Set the Dial

LA RECENSIONE

You know that classmate who on the first day of first grade pulls you aside to explain that the scribble he just scratched onto the blackboard is “la figa pelosa”?

Or when you were kicked out of a party because the power of a burp was so detonative that it irreversibly offended the sensibilities of the birthday friend’s parents?

Have you ever been mesmerized watching a contest of who can produce the longest flame by igniting their own farts?

And held back laughter at your grandmother's funeral because the eulogy from the unwitting officiant did not in the slightest reflect the shadowy nature of the elderly relative?

After all, he couldn't know about the beatings she inflicted on other patients in the hospital or the prolonged farts she would emit along the church bench at every Christmas vigil.

Anyway... but you're probably wondering what the hell this has to do with Black Tusk.

It does.

Because this is the level of ignorance, brazenness and "musical" insolence that you can find among the tracks of this work by the Savannah trio, whose genre is self-defined as "swamp metal" (what a mega-galactic bullshit).

In other words, a murky blend of sludge, stoner echoes and doom, punk core... basically, the usual stoner stuff but with the gift of conciseness (the tracks rarely exceed four minutes) and enriched by the art nouveau-flavored artwork of the cover created by John Dyer Baizley (yes, the modern-day Alfons Mucha frontman of Baroness).

Take this description and multiply it for each of the albums produced by Black Tusk, as they are all the same.

Black Tusk didn't invent a damn thing, but there's a way and a way to be so crass and heavy.

This is the right way.

Like the little Vincenzino who drew the figa, like an unexpected burp blasted in the face of respectable adults, or like my grandmother.

She would have struck with her back-scratching cane even the skull cases of these three individuals.