Cripple Bastards
Variante Alla Morte

After a long wait, "Variante alla morte" comes out in September 2008 under Feto Records, the label of masters Shane Embury and Mick Kenney. But my heart is immediately divided.

This album is not exactly what I expected from Cripple Bastards. And yes, I’ve been listening to it for months now, headbanging, screaming the lyrics in the car, sometimes it excites me, other times truthfully less. Yet it’s a work with balls, just imagine, the kind that would make you convert on the spot if they made at least one like this every year. But why then do I feel lost? One listens to grindcore because it’s a genre akin to pure art: provocative and ignorant, raw, violent, and ultimately cathartic; imaginative and poetic at the same time. "You suffer, but why?".

I suffer because in this latest work of the Cripple Bastards I found a lot of professionalism, which is welcome; a flawless production (Fredrik Nordström, already with Opeth and other leading Swedish bands), which is welcome; longer songs with stop and go and a complex riffing, which is welcome. But one can feel too much the shift towards death/thrash at the expense of the rawer and more extreme grind. The lyrics are entirely in Italian again, which is a much welcome return, and they are also much more cryptic and profound compared to the minimalist nihilism of the past (perhaps they are a concept about the Balkan civil war? Giulio would have the authority to do so). The vocals tend more towards growl, in some episodes the voice becomes low and recitative; but damn I terribly miss the impression of a sheep drowning in a barrel of water!! The musicians are all at the top, each in his own right is a sharp and precise machine, the experience is all there and it's felt. In the extreme world scene, Giulio and company now have deservedly earned respect equal to that of Brutal Truth, Napalm Death (bands with whom they have shared the stage excellently) or the lamented Nasum, because they’ve been busting their asses for over twenty years with attitude and consistency.

But, to return to the album, who from a Pollock or a Burri or a Piero Manzoni would have ever expected a normal canvas (however stunning) painted with normal tools (however of excellent quality)? Well, the immediate effect would have been similar to listening for me to "Variante alla morte": unsettling.

I have loved, love, and will love Cripple Bastards to death, unique people before being passionate musicians, and I wouldn’t have wanted to rate such a mature and different album from what I honestly expected; but I despise the cowardly, and I rate 4 out of 5, even though my heart cries...

"Blood calls": NEVER TOLERATE!!