Monumentum
In Absentia Christi

What is this slow drowning in a Mediterranean dream, warm and humid, suffocating in its slow pace, feverish in its liturgical asceticism, terrifying for its depth? What is it?

What are these scents, these fragrances that bring to mind Asia Minor, the Near Middle East, India, Scylla and Charybdis, Circe, the wandering among peoples (and almost by osmosis absorbing part of their essence) of an exhausted Ulysses?

“In Absentia Christi” is the first full-length from our local Monumentum, a legendary group formed around the leader and main composer multi-instrumentalist Roberto Mammarella, a musician appreciated for the immense courage of his propositions and today the founder/mastermind of the record label SoundCave/Avantgarde Rec (do you like Katatonia? Check out for example "Brave, Murder, Day" and take a look at the record label that published it). Just to give you a better idea of the character, I would like to remind you that the legendary “Live in Leipzig” by Mayhem was designed, created, and completed with the collaboration of our own and the mythical Euronymous and then published on the first incarnation of Avantgarde Rec, which is Obscure Plasma Records.

And since we're on the topic of record labels, I would like to point out another oddity/peculiarity: the album we are about to discover was supposed to be released by Deathlike Silence, owned by Euronymous himself, but since one fine day the boss of the "Norwegian satanic mafia" woke up dead, stabbed, everything passed into the hands of Misanthropy Records, which had just published the debut album of Varg Vikernes, that is Euronymous's murderer.

Having said these facts branded in the '90s, I would say we can proceed to analyze our “In Absentia Christi.”

Given what was just mentioned above, many of you might think we are faced with an album with strong black connotations and I ironically say that you are not at all far: black, preferably matte, is the foundation of this album, it is the base upon which apocalyptic compositions of unheard suffering stand, masochistic compulsions that drag the listener into a vortex of terrified emotions. If musically you are thinking of Nordic-style black metal, I tell you that you are extremely off track (even though the mood created by listening to this LP brings to mind the malevolence that Abruptum managed to infuse in the debut "Obscuratatem avoco amplectere me"): it is practically impossible to clearly describe what is the typical MonumentuM sound, as there is no continuity of intent among the rare releases of the group, for example avant-garde doom metal that owes much to the Celtic Frost of “Morbid Tales/Emperor's Return” regarding the demo “Musaeum_Hermeticum” (A.D.1989), while already in the split Ep with the legendary Rotting Christ we find ourselves faced with a drift of a strictly death rock/dark nature (Christian Death's Rozz Williams era) even if strong ties with the metal world are still maintained, not to mention the dub/trip hop components of Depeche Mode's memories in the subsequent “Ad Nauseam” and “Metastasi.” Therefore, the sonic kaleidoscope that our friends know how to paint is truly original and also complex to metabolize.

“In Absentia Christi,” as mentioned before, is the first LP by our friends and it is certainly an absolute masterpiece in terms of originality because such sounds have never been heard elsewhere, echoing metal (very little), prog and Italian singer-songwriters of the 70s (Goblin above all musically, but clear citations in the inner cover of a Mia Martini song taken up in English), electro goth (the cover of "Fade to Grey” by Visage is wonderful, moreover sung in French by guest vocalist Francesca Nicoli of Ataraxia), ethnic and tribal music in the wake of Dead Can Dance's "The Serpent's Egg," all on a musical basis that recalls the use of the concept, given that the incipit of the opener "Battesimo-Nero Opaco” serves as a link between the 10 songs that make up the album in question.

Ten magical songs, infused with metaphysical fragrances, of metempsychosis, of macabre carnivals, of lucid delusion, of atmospheres rich in sounds but nihilistic in intent, of unrepeatable and unique magic and not least of Italian poetic culture.

Try listening to “On Perspective of Spiritual Catharsis” and tell me it's not like that, let yourself go to the contorted sound of “Nephtali” (already present on “Musaeum_Hermeticum” but here clearly distorted) or slowly sink into the darkness of “La noia,” whose lyrics are nothing more than a free interpretation and translation of “Sulla noia e Disperazione, by Giacomo Leopardi.

In conclusion, a few words about the performance of singers/declaimers Andrea Zanetti and Francesca Nicoli: exceptional in accompanying the deviant sonic drift with transport and lasciviousness, personality, and suffering.