Paul Chain
In The Darkness

Paul Chain, born Paolo Catena. An Italian talent whose genius is recognized even at an international level, yet despite this, he has always remained far from the superstar Olympus, preferring to circulate in the underground scene.

A multi-instrumentalist, former founding member of the legendary Death SS, Paul Chain is one of the first experimenters of Doom Metal, which he interprets in an entirely personal manner and always devoted to experimentation, with broad contaminations from other genres such as psychedelia. After the dissolution of Death SS, Paul Chain continued on his path with Paul Chain Violet Theatre, releasing "Detaching From Satan" in 1984, in which the Pesaro artist distanced himself from his past musical experiences in the band devoted to the satanism of Steve Sylvester, thus renouncing that phase of his life. Having clarified things in this way, Catena in 1986 released this "In The Darkness," a concentrate of Sabbathian Doom with psychedelic contaminations that creates that typical heavy and obsessive atmosphere that he was capable of creating already in the times of Death SS in pieces like "Chains Of Death," "Black And Violet," or "The Bones And The Grave," but here it pervades the album throughout its entire duration.

The album consists of eight tracks in which Paul Chain's obsession with death is always present and palpable, sung in his voice that, to be fair, is not exactly the pinnacle of technique but knows how to effectively render the emotions of the brilliant author, at times suffering and fearful, almost resigned to the inevitability of fate, at times gritty and abrasive, yet without losing that aura of the macabre. Almost as if to underline that everything in this life loses meaning in the face of She who will always ultimately triumph, Paul sings his tracks partly in English, partly in a purely phonetic language: that is, he emits sounds that might seem like foreign words but actually have no meaning.

The album opens with the beautiful "Welcome To My Hell," introduced by an acoustic arpeggio, then subsequently cadenced and, one might say, charged with a macabre cheerfulness: in a few words an absolutely spot-on piece, so much so that his former partner Steve Sylvester will cover it, retaining its title, in his "Black Mass" in 1988. The atmosphere becomes much heavier with the following "Meat," which brings us back to more Black-Sabbathian parameters and sounds: it is another fantastic piece, where the sulfurous and evocative guitar of our hero dominates, creating what I believe to be one of the album's peaks, drawing from its dark chords an atmosphere laden with apprehension for an inevitable fate already imbued with the fetors of the grave. The subsequent "War" is a very slow psychedelic piece performed by Paul on the organ, while his voice seems to arrive vague and distant, as if from the Underworld. After this immersion in a heavy atmosphere, the artist offers us "Crazy," a piece more upbeat and always Sabbathian in style, in which our artist reveals, amusingly, that he is essentially a madman, as was the case in "Schizofrenic" (1983) of Death SS-ian memory. "Grey Life" is more decisive, gritty, and introduces the listener to a more Heavy Metal sound, with faster and squarer riffs and guitar gallops interspersed with brief solos. The following "Woman And Knife" has a more sinister pace and forgoes the speed of the previous track, while remaining within Hard and Heavy realms.

"Mortuary Hearse" brings us back to the Metal and vaguely reminds us of the sound of one of his Death SS's oldest songs, "Black Mummy," which has a driving rhythm; towards the end of the piece Paul also indulges in a textbook solo, evocative as usual is his style, while the final gallop is accompanied by the organ. A furious and chaotic race of instruments, broken by a sudden silence, leads us to the real highlight of the album, the title track "In The Darkness," slow like the inexorable steps of death, chiseled by a sulfurous and melancholic guitar that supports Paul’s lost and reverberated voice, which can become aggressive in the refrain, where even his guitar takes off into a determined yet slow and evocative riff: in short, Paul Chain's Doom Metal in its purest essence, a superb song, concluded with a dying whisper from the author and which not by chance will be taken up, like "Welcome To My Hell," by Steve Sylvester in "Black Mass," who will not alter its title and will thus present both pieces as tributes to his old partner.

In conclusion, I reiterate that this is an excellent album, capable of evoking deadly and melancholic atmospheres and truly dragging the listener into darkness, a darkness as heavy as our fears when we feel the cold of Death's bony hand sneering on our shoulder, and everything around becomes black and looking at our life we see only a theory of meaningless images and memories. I recommend it to a very diverse audience, as in fact is the genre proposed by the author, but especially to all lovers of Rock in the Black Sabbath style and in particular of Doom, once again remembering that Paul Chain is an Italian talent to rediscover and know, a true artist, but above all a TRUE artist.