Fratello Metallo
Misteri

If there's one genre that takes the piss and deserves to be taken the piss out of, it's the "metal" genre. "Metal" is that stuff where crosses turn upside down, where there are always forests on the cover, where you have to dress up like an idiot and wield a space halberd, otherwise no one buys your records, where Bibles are thrown from the stage, where it's said that God or the Devil are great and the end of the world is coming. Then there are the boots and plush underwear, Conan the Barbarian and The Warriors of the United World, the "voting" dragons, the swords, cups, coins, and clubs, the record that if played backwards you end up killing yourself, the brutalized corpses on the cover. The "metalloids" are tough and pure that if Bossi saw them, he'd dress them in green, but instead, they love to dress in black leather, they're either all fat and ugly or all ugly and short (which also makes a good tongue twister) and they think they're better than everyone else, which I've never understood who said that. And the music? It's not important, "metal" feeds on slogans and clichés, and if Ricchi e Poveri were playing, it would be the same.

Then there's heavy metal, but that's another story, that genre is beyond these pages.

Great news for hardcore metalloids: this year's fall-winter collection features a new entry! Leave home your studs and assorted junk, put away the Brutal Ejaculation t-shirt, and wear a nice habit, a beautiful rosary, and come on, cover those pimples with some beard, throw away the big spurred boots, there's a nice pair of open sandals that also bring brutal smell.

Brother Metallo could be the fifth member of Manowar, for creed and metallic proclamations, he probably will never ride a motorcycle, but I'd swear on the plush underwear under his lovely habit. Brother Metallo, aka Brother Cesare Ionizzi, 62 years old, is someone who used to write church music and then, struck on the road to Damascus, suddenly had the gift of the Sacred Metallic Fire and started writing metallic music.

The good brother started attending metal concerts, like Gods of Metal, even managing to perform. He says that God and metal can reconcile, that his life changed at a Metallica concert. No problem, only that good Cesare is not 15 years old with pimples, but he's 62 with a beard that makes him look like Brother Indovino.

Now, I have two balls: Right Ball and Left Ball (once I tried to swap their positions but couldn't manage it). I'm willing to amputate the right ball if I find even one, I say just one, metal record in the cell where the good Capuchin brother resides.

Because, and here's the big twist, they made him make a record!!! Just like that priest they had perform in Sanremo many years ago!!! Only that Brother throws horns and wears a studded steel rosary, and I'm convinced that if he went on the Sanremo stage, he'd start peeing on the audience.

The record is called "Misteri" and it's a mystery how it hasn't already shot to the top of the sales charts. Yes, because it's such a disgusting thing that I'm amazed how the Italian people, used to obscenities, haven't rushed en masse to buy it, perhaps thinking it's some kind of charitable work (we're also a people of bleeding hearts, let's not forget).

Everyone is free to make a record, no doubt about it, but I would have expected from a brother, who regardless of what he says, doesn't understand a damn thing about music, that he would give his "metallic" sermons for free, maybe with a free download from his website or with a voluntary offering, yes, just like in a church. But no, take out your wallet to listen to barely an hour of sermons with a guitar background (yes, the one that goes filù filà).

Brother Cesare doesn't sing but just preaches with a baritone tone, and from the series "the end of the world is near!!!!!" on a clichéd and overused hard rock base stuff like this: "like a mirror that contains metal... even the metalhead is the image of God, God loves us all, even metalheads".

The only thing that bothers me is that these things only happen in metal; these characters worthy of a theatrical representation do not find fertile ground in country rock or psychedelic rock, but only and exclusively in metal.

It's always Iron Maiden's fault: what have they created since they've been putting monsters on their covers!