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Fifteen years of a career conducted with a straight back and chest out, taming kilometers of highway and hours of lost sleep never recovered. Three decades passed without ever shying away from that kind of responsibility which, once it reaches a certain scale, becomes inevitable for every artist of popular extraction, with sacrifice as the only accepted currency to pay for the luxury of making music.
It was an unusual, feverish wait, the one that consumed the last few weeks around the release of the third full-length by the Turinese Bull Brigade.
As if professionals and audiences within the independent scene had placed on Eugy and company, more or less consciously, their expectations of seeing the spark of Italian hardcore punk reignite after two lethargic springs.
What we all probably ignored is that, in reality, under the dust, "Il Fuoco Non Si È Spento” (The Fire Has Not Gone Out).
On the contrary, for the return more than 5 years after "Vita Libertà," the Sabaudian combo is more serious than ever, relying on Fabio Valente (former Arsenico) for the production of what is most dear to them: nine stories of stadium life, of love and friendship, conquests and failures, lessons learned on the road (and on the curve) and certainties that waver, anxieties and ardors of those who at forty are anything but resolved, yet know well which path to tread to remain true to themselves.
But it is also something more, a true journey beyond the "colle degli dèi" (hill of the gods) to conquer musical territories unexplored by them until today.
The Oi! matrix becomes more discreet compared to the past, like a photo of a girlfriend kept in the wallet accompanying the Bull Brigade along the renewal path of a sound that remains peculiar yet here embraces melodies reminiscent of The Menzingers, allowing Eugy to open new gashes in his garnet-colored sky through which to observe the same reality from a new perspective.
For instance, if you piece together the 9 tracks, they form the most beautiful letter a lover has ever written to their beloved, a sort of contemporary chivalric poem that continuously refers to the city of Turin, the bull team, and the Torinese philosophy, the working-class one, the one that doesn’t win often but has the heart and recklessness of lovers.
The feeling is that they no longer settle for their role as witnesses (first) and designated successors (later) of what is the combative spirit of countercultural Turin, the Bull Brigade have raised the bar.
For themselves and for the entire underground movement.
For production quality, for content level, for attitude, this record takes on the honor and burden of marking a before and after.
Nothing will be the same again; one can only hope that the bull brigade continues on this new path even if it means doing it with "Cuori Stanchi" (Tired Hearts), but never tamed.
Straight back and chest out.
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