Richard Benson
L'Inferno dei Vivi

"Through me you enter the city of woe, through me you enter eternal pain, through me you enter the abode of the lost. Justice moved my high maker; divine power made me, highest wisdom, and primal love. Before me nothing was created if not eternal, and eternal I endure. Abandon all hope, you who enter here."

"I place you among the crawling worms of the circle soiled by rats, I cover you with leeches that will attract vultures, which will feed on your carcass, BEFORE THE POISONNNNN... I will bring you to putrefaction, among cyanide and waste materials, enclosing the noise of the world in ascetic solitude. I will take you to the Hermitage of Samoggia, with a globe, perhaps to remind myself of the limits of the horizon."

First of all, I must say that returning to work with Richard sixteen years after the "Madre Tortura" experience was an immense pleasure, as I have already said, and as you all well know, it was I, the self-proclaimed Christ Pinocchio, who produced "The Inferno of the Living" and it wasn't easy, I had to resort to immoral stratagems to get what I wanted. I make art, I make opinion, I make music, I make fashion, but first of all, I am a businessman, I want money, real money, and before starting the sessions, I took Richard aside and said something like: "Richa, I know you're the fastest guitarist in the world and you want to fill this record with a ton of solos and scales and pickfalls etcetera; Richard, amicably, you can just forget it. People don't give a damn about your hyper-technical solos, people want to hear the prophet in you, the Lizard King in you, the Black Pope in you, did we understand each other!?" Having said this, emulating Phil Spector, I pulled out from an inside pocket of my jacket my gun, a Luger; not just any Luger but THAT Luger. What do you say, you don't believe it? And you're right not to believe it, because it's a big bullshit!

And so the Benzoni, like the Alighieri before him, takes us to explore the malebolge of hell, the difference is this time it’s the inferno of the living, the inferno that surrounds us, the inferno that follows us, almost like a kitten. The bensonian hell has a dual dimension, a dichotomy perfectly encapsulated in the two canticles of greatest intensity and literary content, namely "I Sucked Oil of the Cross" and "You Must Be Scared": with the first, you enter the heart of darkness of the same Richard Benson, in a dark past of depravations, heinous crimes, and misuse of improper substances; the Benzoni lays himself bare confessing terrible secrets, even proclaiming himself a new Messiah and bearer of necrophilia; "I am the Evil that curses blasphemous phrases, behind a muzzle like a WAR DOG." In "You Must Be Scared" introspection gives way to a scathing social critique that stigmatizes the paranoias of modern society, emblematic is the fact that, apart from a hint of a riff at the beginning and a short solo at the end, what underpins the invective is an arrogant and very trashy tunz-tunz, which implies a rebellion and a rejection of the clichés of Metal itself. It is no longer just Steve Vai who has to be scared, but the whole human race: being scared as a demonstration of sensitivity and social conscience, this is the thought of the Great Poet: "You must be scared to enter that building, chained from the bedroom to the bathroom door, anxiety is the anticipation of future danger, gelled in a spider's web with no ESCAPEEEEEEE... disgusting, disgusting, DISGUSTINGGGGG..."

The title track and first Cantica aims to renew the literary legacy of "Madre Tortura," though without the magniloquent gothic-orchestral flourishes of the latter: religions have failed, they are leading us to ruin and paranoia, behind them looms an unequivocal presence, "Christ Canaro, in a Sahara of snow, counterfeit missions dictated by law, neo-Nazis in search of their prey, Satan reigns in our FAYTHHHH". The right-hand path and the left-hand path are equal; the only path worth following is the one that leads to the Symposium; it's a path paved with entropy but also asceticism, both these aspects are amply illustrated in the whirlwind "Blood", a theatrical, danceable piece of great impact, a possible second single after the super-hit "The Dwarfs" (which, incidentally, has nothing to do with the rest of the album). But "The Inferno of the Living" is not composed solely of impassioned sermons, "Malleus Maleficarum", for example, is an obsessive litany, a moment of meditation and reflection, a mystical moment I dare say, on whose notes one can improvise a procession armed with burning torches and white conical hoods, while "De Profundis" is the triumph of pain, Richard's screams reach paroxysmal levels of intensity and horror, here Madre Tortura removes the mask and reveals its true face, a face of sadism and madness; He himself says it, "decapitation is part of the great monotheistic pain". Finally comes "The Salt of Satan", which reveals a sweeter and more reflective Benzoni, accompanied by an organ and Middle Eastern choirs; here he speaks about his relationship with drugs, admits that he sought self-destruction, but this is part of the past, today's Richard Benson is an elderly sage who "Just wants peace, the peace of those shadowy woods, even though instinct fears it". Richard has found his Beatrice, Ester, or rather, Mrs. Ester Benson, his sweetest spouse, who saved him from himself, elevating him to a new wisdom: "God is actually a woman whose priesthood gave me a term, the substances I abused were just the salt of Satan".

It took many years, but finally, the abstract visions of "Infernal Hierarchies" have materialized in a definitive form. Richard Benson is the High Pontiff, the much-mythologized Petrus Romanus, a depraved Pope, dedicated to nepotism and simony, who vulgar displays all the splendor of his sacrilegious vestments: the wig is his tiara, the famous Infernal Staff his crosier, the demon statue attached to the jacket his pallium, the unique glasses adorned with the wings of the Lord of the flies his piscatory ring. It goes without saying that "The Inferno of the Living" is the definitive Work, the cornerstone encyclical of his Pontificate, an Angelus Infernalis proclaimed Urbi et Orbi from the pulpit of a desecrated cathedral. Some have said that an artist will show us the way to salvation, many have identified this phantasmal redeemer in the figure of Bob Dylan, but I would like to close my hermeneutic with a question: what if the chosen one is Richard Benson? Heretic thought, difficult for the masses to accept, anathema for the last and the disgusting, for the fetid, the vile and the pious, destined for total annihilation, yet I wouldn’t rule it out a priori, after all, madmen have been considered mediators between the Human and the Divine since the dawn of time.