Christian Death
The Scriptures

Los Angeles; Sunset Boulevard, the cocktail parties at exclusive resorts overlooking the Pacific, the Walk of Fame, Hollywood, the splendor of Beverly Hills, and the dance floors in luxurious nightclubs. Symbols of the West Coast that moves to the rhythm of the wildest fun where sweaty, salt-scented bodies sway eagerly under a scorching sun. Yet, strangely enough, the City of Angels has given birth to the darkest shadows imaginable, the eclipse par excellence, the Kingdom of Night in the pale and dark figure of Rozz Williams with his sinister creation, Christian Death.

Rozz's iconography, diametrically opposed to that of his L.A., always dressed up in blasphemous and non-conformist attire, permeates the entity Christian Death in his own image and likeness and places the band in the highest ranks of American musical underground. In the tradition of the best goth-rock, horror-punk lineage of Bauhaus, Siouxsie And The Banshees, Sisters of Mercy, Misfits, and Cramps, our Californians produced in 1982 and 1984 two masterpieces destined to become milestones of the genre: "Only Theatre Of Pain" (Frontier Records) and "Catastrophe Ballet" (L'Invitation Au Suicide). But the genius and unpredictability of geniuses always hold major surprises. And so, Williams, in the mood for new musical and figurative experiments and in open disagreement with the group's choices, left after the third work, "Ashes" (L'Invitation Au Suicide, 1985) (pleasant but decidedly inferior to the first two), handing the reins over to multi-instrumentalist Valor Kand and Gitane Demone (who joined C.D. during the recordings of "Catastrophe Ballet"). Armed with a sound tried and acclaimed by specialized critics, the two continue along the line traced by Rozz, adding an art-hard-rock component easily blendable with the embryonic sounds. With this ensemble and new musical approach, they place "The Wind Kissed Pictures" (Supporti Fonografici, 1985), Atrocities (Normal, 1986), and in 1987, again for Normal, the fifth album "The Scriptures".

Fans from the early days have not at all digested this new skin of the band, rejecting the new direction entirely. Considering the Williams era unique and unrepeatable and avoiding an unfair, useless comparison, "The Scriptures" is a complex work, difficult to understand and appreciate at first listen, deserving a careful analysis, the kind reserved for albums that do not reveal themselves easily, those that require removing the surface layer to be dazzled by them. The minimal and unsettling symbolism placed on a black background on the cover is an eloquent calling card. A concept album on the role of religions in history and societies, where Valor ventures into deep philosophical and metaphysical paths, highlighting his excellent songwriter lyrics. The incredible creative and instrumental capacity of the new frontman and the crystalline talent residing in Demone's voice ride and lead a journey on a thin line between anxieties, reflections, and memories, speaking boldly and without hesitation, about nearly unpronounceable taboos like sex, HIV, and the Catholic religion (to which the fiercest criticisms are addressed).

THE DAYS OF YORE AND NONCE

The first part of the album opens with the chapter "The Days Of Yore And Nonce," the most energetic, most goth-rock session. "Prelude," the album's antechamber, draws from a passage from the Bible (Matthew 12:39-40), ending in an infinite loop "Jesus descended into hell" that distracts the listener from the meaning of the verse and assumes the connotations of a condemnation, an inquisition. A quick reflection and time give space to a sharp and incisive violin overture that triggers "Song Of Songs" (related to the Song of Solomon, a text contained in the Hebrew and Christian Bible, attributed to King Solomon), where Valor's baritone voice persuades all Eustachian trumpets within its range, and Demone, in the chorus, screams distressed of being "sick with love"; we too begin to feel that way. "Six hundred and sixty six, worship the wild beast," resounds the blasphemous "Vanity," the most hostile track to Catholicism among the twelve, which adds that "We are all God's and men's prostitutes, this is our vanity." The subsequent "Four Horsemen" initially resembles "Rejoyce" by fellow band Jefferson Airplane, an improbable blend of genres and musical eras that dissolves in a minute, when Kota's relentless bass and David Glass's drums change register, providing a valuable punk rock that matches and homogenizes with the first side of the album. And then comes "1983." If there is a valid reason to own this work, it lies in this shocking, enchanting cover of the late Hendrix, placed in the earliest positions of an imagined ranking of famous reinterpretations. Valor's hypnotic guitar, cream of the highest academia, a master in dream journey sciences, accompanies Demone's surreal, magnetic voice from an undefined parallel dimension in an orgiastic mixture of singing, guitar, and drums that closes the first part of the album in a swarm of indelible emotions, continuing to buzz in your head when the needle, at the end of the run, has returned to its housing, providing the silence that precedes the second part, that for meditating, reflecting, and processing the shock.

THE WOMB OF TIME

Turning the record, the sounds change, the b.p.m. The atmospheres expand and sound heavier and colder, aided by a decidedly experimental and ambient sound, in many ways a canonical industrial fashion blossoming precisely at that time. In fact, the initial, unsettling "Omega Dawn" underscores the change of course, marked by a rolling snare-bass march that will appear in other parts of the second session. An apocalyptic scenario where the entire earth burns, the sea becomes a sea of blood, and amid unspeakable fears, we arrive swiftly and disconcerted, after a minute and a half of indefinite sounds in "A Ringing In Their Ears," at the moving "Golden Age." Here, this track is the second reason (just by track order) to own said record. "Children and fairies chattering secrets in pretty ears," the perfect moment of life, the energy, the ardor, the strength that boldly pushes you to embrace a world smiling at your young age, years so vibrant and intense that they fly away before you can linger or hesitate. So the light of a radiant dawn flows sweetly and intoxicatingly in Gitane Demone's hypnotic lyric and soon becomes a fiery sunset, the dusk of existence. Everything finished, everything lived, everything enjoyed in three and a half minutes of eternity, too short to satisfy our ears but absolutely, incredibly perfect to add even a single breath more. The announced sunset, the dusk arrives truly in the subsequent "Alpha Sunset," a resigned-toned track where Valor's singing drags wearily through tales of ancient warriors and princes of war. The martial interlude of "Spilt Blood" flows into "Raw War," a dark experiment led, broadly speaking, by drums and guitar, where Gitane finds space to tell us stories of suicides and ghosts. The work grants the final stage to "Reflections." The piano's opening is something that devastates your soul, but it's just the first of many sections that make up this mini-suite. Distant and asynchronous voices, deep dark ambient themes dressed in ghostly pianos, the usual, persistent snare-bass march, and a gong struck in the last notes, package the work. The ten thousand first edition copies were released with an attached 7" containing the tracks "Jezebel's Tribulation" and "Wraeththu."

Thirty years have passed since that distant 1987, yet the glimmers, the mysteries, and the intrinsic stories of the pages aligned in the grooves of this work continue to fascinate. The golden age of Rozz and his sonic monuments will remain carved in the musical firmament, and some may remember that five years later, during the long, sweltering Californian days, an appendix of our good Rozz conceived important "scriptures" to hand down to posterity.