Lento
Icon

In ancient times, there existed worlds without roads, without skyscrapers, without supermarkets.

In those vast fractions of time, the sky was cold and the ice advanced over the land like a bleak cancer intent on dominating the earth. The use of words, so indispensable to us now, was but an infinitesimal nothing compared to the predominance of the mountain ranges, the darkness of volcanic deserts, the dull noise of flesh being disemboweled and chewed by any animal intent on survival. Humans were as far removed as one could currently imagine. And so, they sought references among the asperities of a wild nature, a bitch flaunting a nonexistent yet growing presence, increasingly dominant, increasingly creeping among the fears of a humankind committed to eternal war against universal chaos. Constellations, animals, plants. Everything appeared useful as a reference, an icon, a static frame with which to orient one's mental stability. Something to believe in, no matter what.

"Icon" is this. And much more.

Published in April of this year so alien to the century just ended, this album is a clear transition for the Roman band towards unexplored territories of the human psyche, perhaps in search of a lost meaning within an increasingly fragile existence, traversing the dim and endless corridors of the mind. In the darkness, Lento enter decisively, leaving behind Supernatural Cat of friends Ufomammut, to sign with Denovali Records, a label of remarkable status in the drone, metal, and post-metal experimentation scene. About four years after their last work "Earthen," which I consider extraordinary, the sound presented with "Icon" demonstrates the unparalleled quality of a group of people who know what it means to play to "represent". Unlike the concept-album perspective, each track here merges into an increasingly growing requiem of thoughts whose disconnected flow crashes with unprecedented power at times, only to give way to the silent echo of dissonant and melodic arpeggios simultaneously. Every distortion is damnably calculated to freeze the veins, scratch them with impunity, and bring to attention the existence of plains, glaciers, and geysers of arcane origin rooted in the darkest valleys of one's imagination. Like a hopeless journey towards reaching the destination, this marvelous instrument of sonic abstraction drags us violently over ancient and incomprehensibly jagged Andean crests, gaining altitude, not without an endless number of air and consciousness gaps. Indeed, like a cutting monsoon, the currents of ice-cold air shatter cabinet cones overflowing, erasing the bed of a river we once called balance, to replace it with new anthropomorphic gravitational rules. From "Hymn" to "Hymen," from "Throne" to "Dyad," this and much more will compose itself along the serpentine paths of your hypnotized eardrums. Not to mention the seraphic ending motif of the track that gives the album its name: "Icon." 

The mere notes of that arpeggio are worth the entire track-list.

In conclusion, allow me to say without presumption that Lento has reached with this effort a level of European importance unimaginable until a few years ago, and hardly attainable by the average bands in the sector across the continent. For the record, I challenge anyone to fill 37 minutes and 13 seconds of emptiness with what I am having the chance to listen to right now as I prepare to write this review.

To the skeptics, then, an urgent recommendation: let yourselves be carried away by the massively leaden and chilling metrics of this album. 

You won't regret it.