Raein
Perpetuum

When a few days ago I peeked at the Raein page and I found this brand new artwork staring back at me, saying, "look, we're back", my synapses immediately connected the image captured on the cover to a passage from "The Stranger" by Camus. Specifically, the one "where in front of that night full of signs and stars, I opened myself for the first time to the gentle indifference of the world". Call it a sixth sense if you want, or don't call it anything at all; it’s just an association born from my twisted mind. Round and round we come back here, back to "Salvia," back to talking about Raein and back to intensely living six small jewels set in a chest named "Perpetuum"; which in terms of eternity and time that perpetually beats its ticks has something to say. Not just on an imaginary and lyrical level (every once in a while I'm tempted to throw in a poetic one), but in terms of facts as well. The Raein are eternal, in simple words. Silence may have fallen over them for four years since their last full-length, but when they decide to dive into new compositions, their beat feels more alive than ever. Strong and powerful, capable of rekindling that old love for screamo. In short, the concerts at Dauntaun with La Quiete have marked me indelibly, understand me.

The hermeticism surrounding "Perpetuum" is such that it puts you in the difficult position of not being able to decide. You can't decide anything because you get caught up in it and trapped without too many alternatives; it’s there, waiting for you at the gate, staring at you, and doesn't catch you off guard because you know what to expect from Raein, yet they do it so damn well every time. In few words, few notes, and few minutes, everything that needs to be expressed, they do, removing all redundancy, closing themselves in their shell, which gradually risks collapsing under the weight of time. A cyclical coming and going that presses hard against the walls of a wall made of illusory certainties, thus causing those essential cracks for the nostalgic and romantically melancholic aura of Raein. On this, our guys have few rivals, it's pointless to argue. As I said at the outset, it's not easy to even be able to decide. Indeed, knowing that after less than twenty minutes everything could close, like a rapid transition that catches the eye, kidnaps it only to fade away evanescently and never return. Fortunately, you can put "Perpetuum" back on among vinyl and free downloads, so the timeless problem doesn’t arise, but when in the anonymity (ah-ha) of "Untitled" the Raein dissolve, you know that a sense of emptiness will overwhelm you, but it’s not the type of emptiness "I wasted time, I could have spent it completing the Ravensburger puzzle in the attic", rather that of knowing that everything you listened to lasted damnably little and you would want many more doses of Raeinizina.

So there's nothing left to do but press play again and set off for another trip, alive with melodies and crystals of sudden explosions. However, those ethereal and dreamy waves come powerfully, which refer precisely to that sky on the cover, where everything can light up or go out coldly and aridly, waiting for something that will never come, like "Giovanni Drogo". Oh, purely casual reference. What remains of Perpetuum is the refinement with which Raein's twilight glimpses are constructed, a pathos that chases through the most fragile and rocky crevices where the sung declamations find their most desperate nature. There are many changes in here, in a synthesis that less concise it could not be. The tracks flow, the shape changes, and you are in the presence of a heterogeneous personality where every piece fits perfectly with one another. Quietly locked in the brevity of changes in direction, with a gaze at the more stretched moments that stop and leave you there, immobile, listening to the breeze of distant echoes in which the screams turn into whispers and faded chants. This is "Perpetuum" and this is a grand return, one of those with a capital R, where perhaps it's best to stop at just saying that and only hope that the vital force of Raein never runs out.