Death SS
The 7th Seal

The title of the new work by Death SS is "The Seventh Seal" and it perhaps draws inspiration from a magnificent Swedish film from 1957, directed by Ingmar Bergman, in which a knight returns from the crusades to his homeland, only to find chaos, destruction, and ruin. In his despair, he encounters death and, to give one last meaning to his existence, challenges it to a lethal game of chess, in which Death itself, in the end, will lose, thanks also to the help given to the knight by a varied and strange caravan of human and human-like beings, which joins him in a life journey exhausted by the plague and man's wickedness.

The film, which has been a catalyst for hundreds of comic book artists and novelists, is a cornerstone of surrealist thought and philosophy, and its direction is where all its beauty lies: Death stereotyped as we know and depict it today, represented as an androgynous being with a black cloak that covers it, against the semi-transparent and opaque backdrop of a dark and mysterious sea. Absolutely distressing.
Death SS, therefore, wanted to pay homage to the Swedish director and surrealist cinema, and perhaps, given the band's current assumptions, it wouldn't even be such a remote possibility, given the content and their ever-present desire to amaze listeners with their way of playing music, which Steve Sylvester loves to label as "Horror Rock".

In reality, "The 7th Seal" is an artistic journey that starts from the roughness and ruggedness of sounds, so similar at first listen to those of Black Sabbath's "Dehumanizer," and arrives at an approach that skillfully blends melody and gothicism, heavy effects that are placed precisely where they are for a clear choice, and sibylline hermetic and occult messages. It is a pleasure to listen to the album, which remains beautiful nonetheless, and to discern its numerous, very numerous, influences, attitudes, and derivations that arise from it: Rob Zombie, Black Sabbath, King Diamond (of whom Sylvester is a personal friend), Kiss, Goblin, etc. etc.

This amalgam completely invests the "feeling" of Death SS, from the manner of dressing very similar to that of old-era Kiss but made even more horrific and gothic (some might say "clownish," and perhaps they wouldn't be entirely wrong. To each their own), as if it was a nod to certain Dimmu Borgir or Cradle of Filth, to the way of handling guitars (which, as I said, are very similar to those heard in Black Sabbath, in the manner of Ronnie James Dio), to the singing that, although it is never in falsetto, could very well be compared to the already mentioned King Diamond, but also to Gene Simmons or Alice Cooper.

Precisely Alice Cooper, in fact, seems to be the artist who could most closely resemble Steve Sylvester. The Grand-Guignol shows and the desecrating and blasphemous attitude. Everything contributes to giving voice and "verve" to Death SS, who in their long career made of consistency and cult circuits, have always been able to coexist their horror and occult attitude with a sincere intellectual and artistic honesty which, moreover, rewards them with every release, timely and diverse compared to the previous one and then, damn, we are probably talking about the most famous Italian Heavy Metal band in the world! And if abroad (abroad, not here in Italy) they have such a following, there might be a reason, don't you think? Could it be that foreign kids are much more awake than Italian ones who prefer trashy Nu-Metal and would even sell their grandmothers to make money? I believe so, and as far as I'm concerned, I return to listening to "The 7th Seal," with its magnificent and distressing architectures that arise at every step and can be found, for example, in "S.I.A.G.F.O.M." (it's an acronym. To find out what the initials mean, buy the album...), in "Der Golem", in "Venus Gliph", and, in general, in all the very good compositions of this work.