Paul Chain
Whited Sepulchres

It's reprint time for the cult artist Paolo Catena, an unmissable opportunity to access or dust off works that have been out of official purchasing circuits for a while.

That is how I opened the review of "Life and Death," and so I give way to this one of "Whited Sepulchres," another cornerstone in the career of Paul Chain, which in these months returns to the music market thanks to the recovery work completed by the historic label Minotauro, which had already handled the original releases.

The album in question connects to the experimental vein of the diverse discography of the musician from Pesaro and will probably sound disconcerting to those who expect metal or doom sounds, but not to those who know the extraordinary eclecticism of solo Chain and have appreciated works like "Master of All Times" and "Cosmic Wind." Over the years, the former founder of Death SS has demonstrated the limitations of labels that can be affixed to his music, and this "White Sepulchres" is certainly not an exception but rather one of the first examples of how our artist shows he can navigate different genres while keeping his credibility intact. Something similar had already been tested in certain episodes contained in the double "Violet Art of Improvisation" (released in 1989, but containing compositions dating back to the early eighties); now we are in 1991, so Paul Chain has not evolved, but is expressing further forms of his multifaceted, anarchic, free, and uncompromising approach to art.

With today's descriptive standards, we could simply talk about stoner-rock, but considering Chain's never-concealed love for the seventies sounds, it's not a shocking experience to test one's mental endurance as a listener in front of long improvisational jams that know how to draw equally from space-rock, psychedelia, and heavy metal, even if present in a much less dominant way than in the past.

Take, for example, the massive title track, which alone occupies everything that was originally the first side of the vinyl: twenty solid minutes of wild improvisations dominated by Paul Chain's torrential guitar work, who also picks up the bass for the occasion (with exciting results). Completing the lineup is the loyal Lu Spitfire on drums (his off-beats are relentless) and the guitar support of Alexander Scardavian (blows and gusts of abrasive electricity supporting the master), for a hallucinatory journey placed halfway between the spatial jam of the masters Hawkwind, the cosmic journey sponsored by the early Ash Ra Tempel (those of the legendary debut) and the flashy mood of the instrumental flights typical of seventies police movie soundtracks, centered around irresistible soloing in a guitaristic key with evident Hendrixian derivation: lessons updated to new standards of power and reinterpreted by the overbearing personality of Chain. This composition demonstrates that he has enormous balls: two for the excellent technical qualities on the six strings, the inspiration, charisma, and authority with which he sustains twenty minutes of sonic assaults; another two balls for the courage with which he throws in the listener's face a tour de force of such a kind. This is the Paul Chain we like: the extreme one, absolute, loaded like a bomb, without limits.

And it's not like side B is any less: except for the relaxed moods explored in the short "Two Minutes" (a disorienting clean guitar arpeggio that indeed lasts two minutes), the other three tracks that compose the platter (forty-seven minutes in duration) are other quite long compositions (about eight minutes each) that together, one after the other, form an inexorable descent into the Underworld. "The Fox in the Park" (featuring contributions from former Death SS members Thomas Hand Chaste and Claud Galley) presents itself as the natural continuation of the title track: a soft start only to plunge again into the same tight rhythms, the same indomitable and flamboyant soloing, with the addition of distant and reverberated vocalizations from Chain himself (his contribution behind the microphone is indeed minimal, so much so that we could define the album as instrumental) and a progressive hardening of the sound that in the closing section reconnects to a finally metal attitude, a dirty, hard, raw, granitic, dusty metal, made of menacing riffs supported by the usual deadly rhythmic section (making, only in this case, resurface the never-dormant devotion to the inspirational fathers Black Sabbath, albeit immersed in a cauldron full of LSD).

The subsequent "Traffic" is supported by the dark swirling of gloomy synthesizers and the odd beats of electronics from the Underworld, above which a lysergic guitar draws anxious arabesques while Chain's unsubstantial whisper completes the picture with thick strokes of black paint. The concluding "Are You Ready?", opened by a remote chant, descends further through the depths of Chain's visionary mind, brushing against catacombal ambient, in which the diabolical recitation of Gilas, already Chain's collaborator in other circumstances, reigns supreme.

A sound in stark contrast with the candor of the cover (another punch in the face for those who expected views of cemeteries or grim stretches of black and purple), which indeed calls to mind those "whited sepulchres" that perhaps attest to the pacifist inspiration that animates the entire album and the undeniably pessimistic vision of its author (dedicated "to the dead, victims of the injustice generated by the violence of human stupidity").

A must-have.