Ottone Pesante
Apocalips

The… Brass… Metal…?

Here it is. The Lombardy-Romagna group Ottone Pesante, with their second album "Apocalips," coming out soon on November 2nd, continue the proposal from their first work released in 2016 ("Brassphemy set in Stone"), that is, combining the metal genre with a drum-trumpet and trombone formation.

Clearly, brass instruments have already been incorporated into certain gothic and doom formations, but no group (to my knowledge, at least) has as their only and consequently main players, the brass instruments.

Francesco Bucci (Trombone), Beppe Mondini (Drums), and Paolo Raineri (Trumpet) are "parents" of a type of metal that tends to be, just as the name suggests, "heavy."

"Apocalips" is the tenth and last track of the first EP, as well as the name of Bucci & Co.'s second effort.

A kind of concept album starting from a magnificent cover. A miniature designed by "Ras Dam Foschi" which appears to represent a sound apocalypse, perhaps even a human one, an esoteric journey with the monks of brass.

It all opens with a cannonball straight into the eardrums with the crackling harmonic interweaving of "Shining Bronze Purified in the Crucible" in which the use of the distorted trumpet over the trombone's texture seems credible, as if they resonate guitar harmonics.

The suspended ending leads to a band-like incipit, finding consonances with metal in the second track "Lamb with Seven Horns and Seven Eyes," while it is in the third track that I have my first true moment of total enjoyment.

In "Bleeding Moon," the trombone carpet is inlaid with a theme in tonal sauce, with inserts of Bachian scales and harmonic minors, the triplet chasing between the two brass and Mondini recalls a lot the outro of "The Walking Dead" theme, and the screams at the microphone and certain "clean" trumpet blades by Raineri make the track genuinely bleeding.

"Angels of the Earth" has small extracts that I connect, perhaps without real reason, to "Atwa," "Science," and "Cigaro" by System of a Down.

The first excerpt from the album (of which I provide a link) is the collaboration with Travis Ryan, the "screamer" of the San Diego grindcore group "Cattle Decapitation." The track in question, "The Fifth Trumpet," has an evocative text, from an apocryphal gospel, almost blasphemous and sectarian, of imposing violence. The track begins and ends wickedly, without the slightest chance of redemption.

"Locusts’ Army" is an explosive burst with a 360° head-spinning ending, "Seven Scourges" is suspended between cruelly melodic moments and almost jazzy inventions for phrases and beats, "Twelve Layers of Stones," hard, acrid, and pounding, has one of the most complex live performance moments, with sudden bpm changes and counts in the finale.

And finally…

Dusk.

Sea. Black, almost muddy.

A prow. Two. Three ships.

They are gigantic six-oared battle ships, moving indolently.

A small ship with sails furled, tattered.

War drums beaten with vehemence.

An army of orcs, armed to the teeth.

A landing. A battle that isn’t there. Remains of bones. Fragments of destruction and an ancient death, putrescent, calcined.

The finding of supplies of all kinds.

The discovery of treasures. Gold bars. Silver coins. Necklaces of turquoise, ruby, and opal.

Feast. Drinks made of calf blood, shreds of meat, baths in gold, self-satisfaction, inhuman exultation.

Nightfall. Darkness.

The algae become one with the oars.

The bogeymen sleep.

The orcs rest haughtily.

Nocturnal arrogance.

The bones, sleepily, begin to recompose.

One, ten, hundreds of skeleton soldiers come to life and begin, as if it were a ritual, to slit a foe's throat one by one.

The corpses are thrown one by one into the sea.

Lanterns are thrown. The black water mirror catches fire. The ship doesn't burn, it's protected as if by an eternal curse.

The close-up of a boy in the control cabin with an enigmatic smile.

His face deforms, transforms, disfigures.

Burns.

Remains a skeleton. A skull. A sneer. The ghost ship. In a sea of flames.

Darkness.

This is the short film that "Doom Mood" evoked in me, from the first listen. A heavy track, which wants and needs to be, lasting a full 13 minutes, an epic, monumental soundtrack, suitable for conflicts like "The Battle of Bastards" from "Game of Thrones" or "Battle of Pelennor Fields" from "The Lord of the Rings," and it's a track that has much to do with the "destiny" of the Faenza-based trio, giving us thirty minutes of pure energy in a second album that is worth much more than a simple and inattentive listen!

"And the Fifth Angel sounded a Star had fallen to Earth

The Pit of the Abyss was opened

Smoking like a burning Furnace…"