Marlene Kuntz
Il vile

The softness oozes copiously from every track of this controversial album, an ode to cowardice that ends up being more cynical than cowardice itself. Suffocated detonation, overflowing energy that is held back with extreme difficulty within refined songs. Marlene Kuntz recorded "Il Vile" in 1996, just two years after "Catartica", but there seems to be a chasm between the two albums: following the dazzling and energetic debut album, powerful but not completely in focus and lacking personality, comes this second imposing album, in which the Piedmontese band leaves behind all the unlikely comparisons to Sonic Youth, consolidating a completely personal and unmistakable style.

Godano composes lyrics in which decadently poetic plots harmoniously intertwine with elegantly vulgar language. Sexual frustration, the most creeping servility, ruthless cynicism, disdain, and repressed anger weigh like boulders on Godano's stomach, who can only exorcise them by elevating them to religion. From that explosion of power and pride that is "Retrattile", to the chilling chronicle of a tragedy narrated from the detached perspective of an immutable nature indifferent to human suffering in "L'Agguato", through the "tasty squalor" of sexual "Cenere" and the quiet harmony of "Come Stavamo Ieri", where a sweet guitar arpeggio accompanies one of the best poems that Godano has ever written, to the anthem of sick and pathological love in "Ape Regina", where the slow but inexorable progress of the rhythmic section leads a man hopelessly in love to an inevitable and terrible end. But the programmatic manifesto of the entire album is placed at the end: the title track indeed contains all the elements that characterize the aesthetics of the entire record, exalting them with irreverence and proud pride over a powerful wall of sound. "Il Vile" is a cultured album, a true masterpiece of refined poetry, yet it remains a rock album, imbued with anger, aggressiveness, pride, and expressive urgency.

The long wave of "Il Vile" will propagate for a long time and will lead to two other great albums, "Ho Ucciso Paranoia" and "Che Cosa Vedi", before breaking in "Senza Peso", below its predecessors and less inspired. But Marlene Kuntz will know how to reinvent themselves by exploring new territories and reclaiming unthinkable artistic heights, yet they will relinquish "that love for hate" that was at the base of their aesthetics.