Shizune
Le Voyageur Imprudent

It was clear that Shizune had talent, I could say for a long time, but I would be lying, as I've known them for just a few years. And therein lies the surprise, the disarming ease with which they are quickly carving out a small, yet important space in a congested scene, which never fails to present pearls to be discovered. This time it’s really a case of seeking it out and enjoying it fully, from start to finish. Mind you, more than ever this is not a mere pseudo-reviewer's trick to avoid repetitions when I say "our" guys, but it’s because the Italian flag can proudly flutter in the air with them, without fear even of more renowned and widespread realities that go beyond the Old Continent. I didn't do my homework (badly), and I don't know if the album title refers to the namesake work by René Barjavel. Well, if worse comes to worst, it's my mind seeing connections everywhere, even where they don't exist. It happens to me often now that I think about it, hopefully, that’s not the case here. Okay, let's try not to get distracted and focus on this explosive bomb contained in just 10 tracks (no, hang on Refused, I’m not semi-plagiarizing you, apologies) that feed and tear into emotional hardcore and screamo. The recipe is essential, and the few delineated lines are lost in the confusion of continuously searching between the most desperate soul and the one pushing for a need to say something, do something, change something, in short, put the combo like in Tekken “triangle + something” and instead of Yoshimitsu’s final move, the painting created by Shizune will come out. And it’s one that’s worth the ticket price.

The inspiration for this review came to me this afternoon. For a couple of weeks, I have been trying to jot down a few lines about this record, but nothing. Truth be told, the fixed thought was this reference to ever-present time, which feels alive and pulsating like Poe's tell-tale heart along the spine supporting the suffering and polyglot lyrics of Shizune, with a stop in France, winking at Albion and returning in the embrace of the Motherland. Still, walking along the Hammer Museum, there was this Charles Gaines exhibition, an artist unknown to me (blessed intellectual honesty) and who, talk about coincidences, was discussing his works on display. Now, since my knowledge of his career sums up to around 45 minutes of a guided tour, I might be telling you a serious blunder, but what struck me about his works, which unite mathematical rigor with poetry, is the attempt to quantify, capturing in small tiles, numbering, giving shades of colors, time. Starting with photographs of trees and leaves, trapping the movement of a dancer, observing the changing seasons on an orchard, or simply noting the evolution and subsequent decay that obscures and engulfs everything that time itself has helped create. An infinite, perpetual cycle. And at this point, you might ask: what the hell does it have to do with Shizune? I'm getting there. Let’s be clear: to best appreciate these records, one must evaluate the emotional component, not the virtuosity. And inside here, there's bucket loads, the ice-cold kind that awaken and terrify. The flow of the present, the echoes of the past, and the uncertainty of the future materialize thanks to the melancholic melodies, the sharp directional changes that frantically strive not to disappear. It’s a wavering alternation between spontaneous recollections at the sound of intimate interludes and screams that hammer, hammer, hammer as if there were no damned tomorrow. This is what screamo demands, and Shizune is right there on the front lines, with the right refinement that brings order to emotional chaos, encapsulating in flakes of barely two minutes an adrenaline-packed and reflective concentrate. Ah, the oxymorons, old friends.

So on my way home, I played in a loop the minute-long instrumental of “Orienteering in Aokigahara” in my headphones; a somewhat surreal atmosphere emerges, but there’s something calming and soothing in that delicate repeated arpeggio that comprises it, where out of inertia you are led to see the next chapter that can draw you into the grand finale of this “Le Voyageur Imprudent”. A work that, in the end, I told myself, is good. It’s good for anyone who listens to it. It’s good for the underground scene. It’s good for Dog Knights as they increase their quality roster. It does good what it must do by operating in unison on the right harmonies, on the right dark glimpses inhabited by fragility and Venom's symbiote (okay, I could have avoided the n3rd closure). And well, it’s just such a period where I'm in a "all we love we leave behind" mood (and here come the Converge with bats on my doorstep, wait, here: ©) and so reading Shizune's words and associating them with the liberating screamo feels good. That’s enough.