Long Hair In Three Stages
The Oak Within The Acorn

In the beginning, there were Uzeda, a historic noise band from Catania, the first Italian group to sign with Steve Albini's label. Since that distant 1992, a bridge has been created connecting the Sicilian city to the Windy City, Chicago, and the overseas post-hardcore scene. A bridge that the Long Hair In Three Stages now traverse perfectly. Their third album is the result of constant harmony, with weekly meetings to compose, arrange, and finalize tracks recorded entirely live (and I bet they rock on stage), discussing how difficult communication is today, how dark this period is that we are living through, where everything is excessively heightened. There is an undercurrent of anger in every track. Anger towards that sense of helplessness that takes over when we face the world's horrors and feel powerless.

Thirty-four minutes talking about "chaos and dehumanization, the loss of compassion; the need to be alone to talk to oneself, to listen to music or to self-destruct, and about anger, nature, illness, anxieties, and impossible illusions," to use the words of Giuseppe Iaxobaci, the lyricist. An ambitious project, deliberately imperfect, but full of that immediacy and anger that today, more often than not, one feels the need to unleash.