Linea 77
Horror Vacui

The Linea 77 return with a bang, finally landing on a major label after their tumultuous past with Earache (a label dedicated to sounds very different from what our band had been proposing in their previous albums "Numb" and "Available for propaganda") and more determined than ever to gather followers even within national borders, after having made themselves known at the dawn of their career mostly abroad.

For their new work, nothing is left to chance: from the production (by Toby Wright, who boasts names like Metallica and Slayer in his resume) to the choice of songs sung in Italian (6 out of 11) up to the excellent collaborations (with Tiziano Ferro), everything indicates the will to gain a spot under the sun on the much disparaged Italian soil.

The album opens with "The Sharp sound of blades", a classic song in the Linea's style which is enjoyable to listen to although it does not bring any particular changes to the band's musical proposal; changes start to be felt with the second track "Sempre Meglio": slapped bass and stopped guitars (in full "Potato Music Machine" style, although the production difference is quite noticeable) serve as a base on which Emo and Nitto scream their slogans into the mic like J Ax or Cippa in their prime, resulting in a piece as enjoyable as it is capable of granting the band the infamous "two minutes of immortality" if put in heavy rotation on MTV and the like.

The opening of the following "Grotesque" closely resembles the System of a Down of Toxicity and introduces another good piece sung in English, while the next "Il Mostro" is nothing less than the classic single with a "nu-metal in Italian sauce" flavor (from "Fantasma" to "Evoluzione"), as always characterized by an extremely high commercial potential, this time even higher than usual thanks to a truly killer chorus destined to wreak havoc live.

The fifth track and 2nd single "Sogni Risplendono" features the much-discussed collaboration with Tiziano Ferro, but in practice translates into a classic Linea piece with an overdubbed second vocal line: beyond the media impact of the operation and the resentment one might feel towards the character, the impression is that the vocal talents of Tiziano could have been used in a much better way.

With "My Skeleton", the English singing returns for a really well-executed piece that manages to detach from the classic nu-metal frameworks to which the band has accustomed us so far, as well as being particularly distinctive is the following "Penelope", a kind of ballad where the Italian language fits well with vaguely poetic inspired lyrics combined with a bittersweet flavored melody.

The language of Dante and Manzoni returns to take center stage in the rhythmic "Mi Vida", another song with a great two-voice chorus and particularly groovy, as well as the following "Overload", which is appreciated not only for the already praised qualities of the two singers, but also for Chinasky's excellent work on the guitars, not forgetting the valuable work in the rhythm section by Dade and Tozzo.

After a lot of great songs, the quality slightly drops towards the end: if "La Nuova Musica Italiana" is nothing but an ironic march that is frankly embarrassing in some ways (starting from the distorted version of Mameli's anthem), the closing track "Touch 2.0" neither adds nor subtracts from what has been heard so far, confirming the five from Turin with this new work among the best interpreters of the Italian nu-metal scene, understood, of course, in its most mainstream sense.