Sopor Aeternus & The Ensemble Of Shadows
A Strange Thing To Say

“The Impossibility of Fiumani”

Damn, it's been almost two weeks that I've been chasing the latest from Diaframma, it feels like a boxing match between me and my commitments, Three Times Tears, but nothing doing, unfortunate and fortunate circumstances, improbable work hours that poorly align with the record store's hours; finally tonight, the snow, an early exit from work that, however, fatally coincides with the early closing of the store manager, closed again tonight.

Obviously Difficult to Find.

And so “Nothing Serious” will be reviewed by someone luckier than me, but what then to review on this January evening, in Perfect Solitude, in this Siberia of feelings where time seems suspended, frozen, enormously dilated because of the snow that forces us to the home hearth doing nothing at hours too early to go to bed peacefully?

Ok, I'm getting it off my chest, I'm writing about you, oh Anna/Varney Cantodea, so I write about you and this work about which something should have been written long ago, but which just doesn't pull the words out of my mouth. I don't feel like it, but if Fiumani's not there, then I write about you, oh fabulous Anna/Varney Cantodea.

So, let's start with the essentials: 2010, EP, first part of a trilogy (the so-called Ghost Trilogy), followed by the full-length “Have You Seen this Ghost?” (2011) and the other EP “Children of the Corn” (also from 2011). Excellent production by Patrick Damiani, the one from Rome (strange though).

Moving on to the trivial: the usual Sopor Aeternus, few novelties compared to the work that preceded it, that “Les Fleurs du Mal” which had now set the stylistic coordinates of Sopor Aeternus between chamber music and horror-pop. Yes, one appreciates the artist's growth, be it man or woman, today Sopor Aeternus is more likable, fun if you like, grotesque if you prefer, making fun of controversial themes, joking about sex, winking at the eighties pop-wave.

But essentially: they bore.

Or rather: they continue to be Sopor Aeternus, unique and inimitable, those who adored them will continue to appreciate them, but someone might get tired, and perhaps the greatest merit of this work is its rather short duration (thirty-three minutes, not even short for an EP of only five tracks + a bonus track).

Compared to the recent past, the little electronics left is practically abolished, the gothic is dusted off (but a gothic from an early nineteenth-century novel, not that timeless and primeval horror to which we had pleasantly acclimated), the grotesque side is exasperated and the romantic vein invigorated (the Trilogy, it should be noted, is a jubilation of unrequited love and a tangle of repressed sexual urges). However, they also retain those baroque and bouncing atmospheres that make today's creator a puppet of variegated neuroses that is now to be taken as it is, without so many expletives. Neuroses yes, but highly controlled, almost cartoonish or comic-like: “A Strange Thing to Say” is a perfect machine of pain, orchestrated lamentations to the millimeter over an equally timed base where everything is in its place, but where something is obviously missing. No, I don't agree!, I believe!, in a while fabulous Anna/Varney Cantodea will tire of this new guise as a jovial elf of agony and will return to that catacombal shit that loved to stay in the dark not to see others and not see herself, the shit will resurface from a vase that always contains enough of it, dreams and fantasies will pass, and then the real shit will return, the kind you can't even look at in the mirror! If then fabulous Anna/Varney will re-don the clothes of a widow in eternal mourning for the man she never had or will lie in the coffin in a suit and tie as the bank clerk she will be, this will be seen, and every change, forward or backward, will be appreciated, but in some way, she will have to mature or regress and leave the Smurfs behind.

For heaven's sake, it's not a Tiziano Ferro album after all, shovels of annoying sensations are always ready to linger on our palate, what can be reproached to complex and dynamic compositions like the opening title-track (ten breathtaking minutes, a whirlwind of circus hysteria, between strangled screams and pounding drums that in the chorus pump as if it were a King Diamond album) or the third track with the improbable title “The Urine Song”? But even what appeared to be a pleasant novelty (i.e., a more ironic and self-ironic attitude in handling one's distorted emotionality) now ends up being tiring, becoming mannerism, like everything else, after all, i.e., the usual strings, the usual trombones, the usual chiming, the usual vocal flourishes, the usual pompous chamber suite with neither head nor tail with which fabulous Anna/Varney Cantodea has loved to plague us for some time now. But where did the idea go? Where's the inspiration? Where, above all, is the stroke of genius?

And in the end, what strikes is the insane incipit of the solo voice (it's unknown if the final effect is more comical than heartbreaking, but this hardly matters, what's important is being beyond) of the bonus track placed at the end of the EP, that “Oh Chimney Sweep” which nevertheless maintains a thematic bond with the rest, retracing the verses of “Polishing Silver”. Only in that moment did I taste again the greatness that was, or fabulous Anna/Varney Cantodea.

For the rest, Nothing Serious.