Canaan
A Calling to Weakness

Fourth release for the Milanese Canaan, one of the most interesting bands recently promoted from the state of semi-unknown to that of well-known in the underground scene, both in Italy and abroad. Inexplicably, given the skill of Mauro Berchi and his associates, but one might also say obviously.

With punctual cadence, the Lombard collective continues to publish their works, in which one cannot help but notice a progressive improvement, suggesting an interesting artistic maturation. The themes, atmospheres, and philosophy are still those of the debut Blue Fire (dated now 1996), but the compositional level and artistic intelligence have visibly improved.

This A Calling to Weakness encompasses in seventeen tracks multiple nuances, enclosed in a single substance that relentlessly pervades the 71 minutes of listening: pain. Starting from the epitaph written by Mauro himself within the digipak, continuing through the now classic dichotomous structure “song - non-song”, that is, the alternation between a track that follows the rules of song form and another that ignores them (this sequence has become a stylistic signature of the group).

The listener is welcomed in this “call to weakness” by a dreamlike intro, where the downpour of samples of pouring rain on a desolate metropolitan landscape blends with the warm yet hollow sound of a particular African wind instrument, while the soft voice of guest Khalid chants an untranslatable sense of resignation. This feeling of distressed acceptance of things is one of the fundamental traits of the album and Canaan’s music in general. But it's not self-pity nor a wallowing in sorrow, but rather a lucid awareness. Lucidity is the second important note to remember: it manifests throughout the album, expressed in a peculiar search for sounds and arrangements where nothing is left to chance. The manifestation is the structure of the “classic” tracks, those that allow themselves to be framed (let me imply a passivity in this since knowing the artists, they are not at all interested in following a determined genre) in a sort of 2000s dark wave: skeletal rhythms, regular and cadenced drums, both distorted and clean guitars, treated with feedback and reverbs. But there are two other characteristic traits: the massive presence of leaden synths that weigh on the listener’s ears (like in "Essere nulla") and which hardly succeed in attempting to rise above the heavy lid of everyday life (as proven by the apathy of tracks like "Grey" and "The Forever passion", along with the controlled fatalism of "Prayer for nothing" and "Mercury").
The second equally important characteristic element is Mauro's voice, whose low tone weaves perfectly suited vocal lines, from resigned monotone to articulated proclaiming, passing through distorted and filtered. The warm voice of guest Gianni Pedretti (vocalist and mastermind of the entirely Italian project Colloquio) is instead assigned the task of articulating the theme of pain from separation, from loved ones and affections: his interpretation of the bitter words written by Mauro for "Un ultimo patetico addio" is masterful, as well as those he composed himself in "Essere Nulla". Finally, closing the part of the tracks following the structures of song form, one must note the essential part played by Nico Faglia’s bass in tracks like "Red Chrome overdose" and "Everything you say", where the warm and calm pulse lays bare the loneliness and the memory of a comforting hand in times of need.  

To the dark ambient tracks, which do not follow the classic song structure, is entrusted the task of exploring the darker and more hidden territories of human psychology; their mystery and inaccessibility are rendered through dense webs of leaden synths enriched by noise samples or distant echoes of vague and indistinct voices (as in "Scars"), by disturbing ecclesiastical choirs in Submission, or by surreal and ghostly bells in "The Ghosts of my betrayal", extending to the realms of drone music in the foggy "Falling Again".

The journey through the maze of pain comes to an end with two glimpses, which certainly do not constitute a "happy ending", but rather a confirmation of the “call to weakness”. "Frequency Omega", entrusted to The Frozen Autumn's vocalist Diego Merletto, is the deposition of the group’s last wills regarding this work, a sense of suspension between the void that surrounds us, uncertain whether to consider it one of the ways of surviving in modern alienation (Silence all around me / is like a key to neutralize / the deadly frequencies inside). The outro, an essential nursery rhyme of guitar, voice, and synth, closes the transmission, as melancholically as it was opened, but devoid of that perpetually ashen sky that loomed at the beginning: who knows if on the journey the authors, but also we listeners, have shed those burdens we hold onto in the shell of everyday life.  

Summarizing, one of the most interesting works to emerge from the Italian dark scene in the last five years. A painful evocative masterpiece, conceptually elaborated and artistically impeccable. Listen to what these five thirtysomethings have to say, who do not claim to change the world, but only to speak softly and without self-deceptions to those who will have the patience to tarry.

 Because we are echoes in an empty room,
slaves to our own desires,
and our ghosts keep walking beside us,
with hands as sharp as knives.