Ianva
La Mano di Gloria

The whistling of the wind, an air of strings and winds, somewhere between majestic and menacing, outlines a hostile altitude; noises of footsteps slipping on the treacherous rocky surface. "No human being has been up there" pants one of the two through gritted teeth; "not for long" replies the other with a voice that sounds like Michael J. Fox's voiceover. Then the first one slips and seems to bust his face on the rocks. "Scared, huh?" says Michael J. Fox, but the other responds: "I'm not afraid of anything."

I, on the other hand, am afraid to reach the end of "La Mano di Gloria," afraid to reach it without my balls crumbling disastrously like the knees of the guy who was climbing the mountain. Year 2012, then, the third full-length for the Genoese Ianva, but this time Mercy and his band don’t seem to hit the mark, mainly guilty of treading the usual paths and therefore unable to disperse the mists of an oppressive sense of déjà vu that plagues the listening from the first to the last minute of this new work. Yet the basic idea was intriguing: after the dive into the more or less recent history of our country (the romanticized Fiume adventure in the irreverent "Disobbedisco!"; the last seventy years of the "bel paese" mercilessly portrayed in "Italia: Ultimo Atto"), a concept set in a more or less futuristic future could have been a good starting point for a band that, beyond the ideological controversies raised with previous works, had managed to make a name for itself mainly due to an ambitious yet original proposition, considering the current Italian music scene: reactionary lyrics over a refined orchestral fabric that managed to recall both the best Italian songwriting tradition and the tense and dramatic mood typical of a genre such as apocalyptic folk, without giving up a pronounced taste for exquisite cinematic settings inherited directly from the great authors of famous Italian soundtracks, Morricone above all.

"I'm not afraid of anything" – a moment of silence: the introductory "Tempus Destruendi" has just ended – the solemn trumpet of Gianluca Virdis (a protagonist throughout the album) bursts forth, "Il gusto della sfida" materializes, an epic ride sung by a dark De André in spaghetti-western sauce. Drums trot, guitars ride, trumpets whip: in the German chorus of "Edelweiss," the deep voices of Gerhard Hallstatt (Allerseelen) and Franck Machau (Orplid) lend support, emphasizing a thread that, despite obvious stylistic differences, connects the Genoese ensemble to other European formations that make tradition, folklore, and national identity the cornerstone of their proposal. All in all, Ianva is present; the emphasis that has always distinguished them is there (their curse and delight), there are baroque and fancy arrangements (another curse and delight), as well as pompous lyrics dripping with rhetoric at every syllable (as above): in short, all the ingredients that have made the band loved/hated remain. However, something seems not to be right, certainly complicit are the unfortunate choices made behind the mixer: a production job for "La Mano di Gloria" that muddles the sounds (diminishing the sonic rendition of the instrumental layers assembled with the usual skill and accuracy) and muffles the voices (making the lyrics difficult to understand at more than one point). But there is more that is wrong with "La Mano di Gloria": in this work, a general decline in inspiration is felt (particularly in the second half), which certainly does not serve a proposal that is over-the-top – both lyrically and instrumentally – such as Ianva's: by its intrinsic nature, for ambition and professed objectives (in short: awakening awareness and urging action through art), the Genoese collective is irreparably condemned to produce either masterpieces or simply mediocre works: no middle ground is possible for a musical proposal that, without good writing to animate it and a rigorous focus of intents to materialize it, becomes ridiculous, grotesque, childish, unbearably pretentious, where in the past it had been able to take on the contours of grandeur.

"La Mano di Gloria," for the record, is the musical commentary to the novel of the same name, written (but not yet published) by Mercy himself; a fantastic concept that tells us of a near future, as terrible as it is plausible, set between the Ligurian Apennines and Tyrol, between Aspromonte and the Tuscan countryside: it's Italy in 2029, a theater of oppression and a hotbed of revolts, which so recalls the season of the Resistance. The future imagined by Mercy is nothing more than an exacerbation, through twentieth-century categories, of present-day criticalities (with not a veil of criticism towards Europeanist theses), from which the plot originates: it is indeed the 2012 monetary default that leads, through a dramatic escalation of events, to the establishment of an occult totalitarian regime, at whose summit is the Combinat, a supranational governing body, composed of power elites and bankers, which through economic, financial, and military levers oppresses the West's peoples in misery and pain. Opposing this state of affairs is a man: Pietro Jorio, a romantic hero of D'Annunzian mold with an aesthetic conduct ("don't rebel because it is right, do it because it's beautiful"), called upon to lead the revolt and break the yoke of ruthless oppressors. An adventure that does not shy away from the temptation of entangling itself, with some excessive forcing, in the implications of a cloying love story.

Worth highlighting, on Mercy's part, is an effort to seek an ideologically transversal dimension, still coherent with his nostalgic and anti-capitalist vision, populating his story with diverse heroes with different biographical and ideological backgrounds (the former successful advertiser, the indignant Lothar Drusian; the beautiful Vittoria Cristaldi, widow of a mafia boss, driven by revenge for her husband's death; the deviant anarchist Fosco Pardini, driven by ideals of equity), a handful of scornful ones who find intimate communion in dissidence and in the fight against the common enemy, a fight that leverages Jorio's boldness, bizarre strategist of the dream, who intends to celebrate the necessity of action and the affirmation of the individual as an antithesis to the sordid reasons of power and vile money. The boldness, the desperate endeavor of Jorio (desperate because it is against overwhelming forces), despite the tragic ending (but which at the same time contains in itself the seed of the resurgence), are the spark that brings back action and revolt into the heart and spirit of a hopeless era: an invitation to dare against the undareable, a perhaps impossible struggle but necessary as a premise for a new beginning, a future that is proof that even the wildest of dreams can fertilize a world, provided one is willing to dream it to the fullest.

The problem is that without the indispensable notes present in the rich booklet (extremely well curated also from a graphical point of view), it would be hard to understand the narrated events. But beyond the fact that I can't fully appreciate an "art form" that requires explanations (because art should not be explained, for the intrinsic reasons lie within art itself), less bright and less incisive, and more confused and redundant (and contrived and lacking truly evocative images) are Mercy's lyrics, which evidently cannot translate into song format the contents exposed in his novel. Thus, one ends up getting lost in a concept whose narrative thread is impossible to follow without employing superhuman attention: a narrative that, aside from being hazy, also appears unbalanced in its parts, considering that, out of thirteen tracks, the first six essentially serve to introduce the characters, while the last three describe Jorio's thoughts just before and immediately after the final battle. A concept with a big head and a heavy tail, we might say, considering that the salient episodes of the story do not seem to be adequately valued, crushed by excessive introduction and an equally pompous ending.

Mercy's narrative fervor, alas, also impacts the strictly musical dimension, definitely sacrificed for expository ends, a difficulty that translates into a lack of focus of the energies deployed concerning the concept's progression: the compositions, although spiced as usual by the exploits of excellent musicians, get lost, one after the other, in prolix passages, often very similar to each other, incapable in their succession of creating a true climax that reflects the natural unfolding of the plot. The sound gains in martiality, understandable considering the themes, but the injection of a more massive dose of percussion and the adoption of an even more epic approach than before does not imprint the necessary energy on the tracks (mostly ballads), which end up sounding excessive in everything, yet at the same time flat, unengaging, incapable of providing real thrills. The concept doesn't breathe, doesn't take off: what stands out, like a leopard's spot, are precisely those moments where there's an attempt to venture something different, as happens in the carefree "L'anarca," a skewed march based on accordion, with Mercy's fine performance, a clear nod to the folk songs of the anarchist tradition; or in the medieval moods of "Le stelle e i falò" (sung by the always talented Stefania T. D'Alterio, although less impactful in the other two tracks assigned to her), or the engaging title track, a pivotal moment of the work (conceptual peak where it is explained, albeit in a superficially didactic way, the nature and aims of the Combinat), a lengthy industrial excursion featuring the evocative narration of G/Ab Svenym Volgar Dei Xacrestani (voice of the Italian black metal Deviate Daemen) over martial/noise settings.

Everything else is boredom, and reaching the end of the nearly seventy-four minutes of "La Mano di Gloria," as mentioned at the beginning, turns out to be a much more arduous task than the one undertaken by the brave Pietro Jorio against the world. A half misstep, but not an absolute flop, this third act of Ianva, which hopefully will do better in the future.

The potential is obviously there. So is the conceit.