Paul Chain Violet Theatre
Opera 4th

With "Opera 4th," the brief journey on this world of the Violet Theatre, the band of rebirth for the tireless Paolo Catena after his definitive departure from Death SS, comes to a close. What was the Violet Theatre for Catena if not a place to express oneself freely, without having to constantly battle with the oversized ego and protagonist tendencies of his old comrade Steve Sylvester? And so the journey ends already in 1987, as if it had been a liberating pleasure trip (so to speak), just enough time to take a breath of fresh air (so to speak): just enough time for two EPs and two albums (besides this, the excellent "In the Darkness," which remains the cornerstone work of this first artistic reincarnation of Paul Chain). But as the saying goes, when one door closes, another opens, and while the ghosts that haunted the house of Death SS still lingered in the Violet Theatre, it's also true that beyond the curtain was already brewing a dazzling solo career, which would consecrate Paolo Catena as a legendary figure in the post-Sabbath heavy-doom world panorama.

But already in "Opera 4th," released in 1987, heavy-metal seems to be already quite tight for Chain, who in the future will not fear to clash with the most disparate genres, ranging from progressive to psychedelia, from ambient, to esoteric music and space-rock. It's no coincidence that the epitaph of the Violet Theatre is an absolutely asymmetrical record, where Chain on one side dares to dive headlong into outright experimentation, while on the other seems not yet to have the courage to abandon a canonical conception in approaching heavy metal: the components that will harmoniously converge in the phase of artistic maturity are here entirely distinct as abortions of twin fetuses separated from their mother's womb with a butcher's knife. From this sort of "artistic bipolarism," emerges a monstrous and limping two-headed dwarf: an album of healthy and robust heavy-metal that opens with half an hour of only organ and keyboards. Strange, right?, that an album of healthy and robust heavy-metal opens with a 30-minute ambient track. And if at the time such a choice could astonish the devotees of scorching timpani, it certainly does not discompose in the light of what Paul Chain later engineered for the pleasure of our ears (and especially our mind).

In its half-hour, "Our Solitude (Birth, Life, Death)," it reviews the darkest environments that metal could know at the time (I don't know, it reminds me of certain experiments by Celtic Frost, flashes of hallucinated dark-ambient relegated however between the grooves of the proverbial outbursts that shortly will fling open the doors to the black metal phenomenon). Here we're talking about music of the occult, albeit attributable to a still exquisitely prog/psychedelic conception, but already pervaded by a dark existential vision: a vision always projected on the Mystery that lies beyond material life. The church organ looms large in a context where dissonant pseudo new-age keyboard games (dark-age, we might specify), spontaneous flashes of a sick avant-garde, and effects (manipulated voices etc.) don't hold back, cowardly striking precisely where the unwary listener is most vulnerable: the unease facing Death and the Unknown, leading obsessions in Our protagonist's career economy. But the charm and tension are that of the most mystical progressive music, as it never falls into noise for the sake of noise, nor into gaudy horror movie settings (and it's not a given, considering the horror-filmic background that our land provided, not to mention the legacy of groups that made a career on soundtracks - see under Goblin).

The sounds, perverse and slithering as if produced by an orchestra of the damned, after floating for long minutes without pause, overlapping in chorus or delivering hallucinated monologues, suddenly stop, giving way to a roaring guitar and the pounding of a devastating drum: it's "Evil Metal: Obscurity of Error," and the album completely changes coordinates. So abruptly, to initially leave one a bit perplexed. But the track remains a formidable test for the band, which finally compacts into a power trio featuring the bass of Paul Dark and the drums of Alex D'Andrea completing the lineup. Chain screams like an old possessed woman (seems to hear the Accept in satanic version), the guitar is blatantly Sabbathian (it's impossible not to think of the main riff of "Symptom of the Universe"), despite the piece traveling at steady rhythms. But it's not yet Chain's metaphysical doom, rather the horror metal inherited from the just-past experience, and not surprisingly Chain's croaking voice bears more than a little resemblance to the shrill screams of the old comrade Steve Sylvester, while overall the song heavily weighs with the same inspiration that had animated the first pieces signed by Chain for Death SS. The disorienting cowbells present in the central section, where the guitars slow down, injecting that arcane and sacred aura into the sound flow that will increasingly distinguish the metaphysical path of Paul Chain-branded metal, are nevertheless beautiful.

With "Bath-Chair's Mary" the album stabilizes in the confines of the song format, finally settling into heavy metal with catchy choruses and guitars up front. This third track, embellished by a suggestive acoustic break, indeed has the merit of propelling Chain's new creation into the steep slopes of a fascinating doom exploration that will become over time the trademark of the Pesaro musician, but the rock framework remains firmly linked to a still simplistic conception of the genre, despite hallucinogenic keyboards returning to infect vast portions of the track.

With the fourth and final piece "Resurrection in Christ," Chain finally gives himself over to the melancholic sway of a doom-ballad brimming with melody, where the guitar solo parts are nothing short of sublime, while the vocal performance shows all of Chain's technical limitations, reaffirming him as an exceptional guitarist, but an average-at-best singer.

It's difficult to judge an album like this, as for a good two-thirds it consists of ambient, while the remaining part seems like the mutilated fragment of an album of raw horror rock/metal. Perhaps it would have been better to separate the two works into two distinct EPs, as taken individually the two parts are not bad at all, but together they give the impression that both could have been developed more convincingly. The final three tracks, in fact, end up having the effect of arresting too abruptly the atmospheres patiently woven by the first track, which remains an unfinished work: an introduction too long for an album that seems to have a great head but a body too small to remain perfectly balanced.