The Black
Gorgoni

The best classic doom album born in the third millennium?

In my opinion: yes! But what surprises us is the fact that it was released by that “old man” Mario Di Donato, who, with his band The Black, has reached the seventh studio effort, quite a few years after the delightful double hit “Peccatis Nostris/Capistrani Pugnator.”

Our nation's “Marione” returns with another mammoth work, perhaps his best, certainly the most ambitious of his career. “Gorgoni” is a monumental piece that digs its claws directly into Greek mythology, dealing with the three monstrous sisters Medusa, Stheno, and Euryale, as the evocative album cover, curated by Di Donato himself, already suggests, reminding us that he is also a fine painter.
A monstrous album, “Gorgoni,” not only for the themes it deals with but also for its length, as it consists of seventeen tracks with a total duration of almost eighty minutes: a figure that might intimidate anyone, but not the admirers of a genre like doom, and even less the admirers of the artist from Abruzzo.

In many years of career, Mario Di Donato does not seem to lose his touch: if on one side it is true that his figure has become legendary in the national metallic underground, akin to names like Paolo Catena and Antonio Bartoccetti, he cannot be associated with true masterpieces capable of changing the course of history (his sabbathian rooted heavy/doom always sounds derivative), on the other hand, it's impossible to deny an incredible consistency in the quality of his works. “Gorgoni,” like its predecessors, won't change anyone's life, but it will delight those who still long for that sort of “dark metal” that was rampant in the seventies and eighties in Italy, constituting an unparalleled experience in the history of metal as a whole.

Take for instance the introduction “Proludium”: that organ liturgy unheard for years, capable of sweeping away with a gust countless amounts of gothic crap produced in the nineties and two-thousands. A magical, dusty organ that could only come from a sick, frustrated Italy, besieged by centuries of ancestral fears, superstitions of all kinds and unhealthy Catholic poisoning (memento mori!): as if to say, foggy English moors or dense Norwegian woods were not needed, only the oppressive and implacable whip and stick of the Vatican! But beware: the organ is interwoven with hypnotic counterpoints of electric guitar and bass, which then fade into haunting angelic choirs. In less than three minutes lies all the magic of a horrific metal that does not fear to combine the heaviness of electrified compositions with the magic of the best vintage progressive music, inseparably fused in the DNA of these artists, formed in times when genre diversification was not as exasperated as it would become in the following years.

And this is just the beginning: let the black sabbath commence! The robust guitars of Di Donato, the solid rhythmic section of the indestructible Enio Niccolini (with his round, authoritative bass) and Gianluca Bracciale (relentless in his down-tempo as well as lightning-fast in the frequent accelerations, where a double bass drum is not even shunned!). Special applause goes to Di Donato’s engaging and passionate solos, more inspired than usual; as for his vocal performance, it’s known, we are not dealing with a Messiah Marcolin, but his Latin recitation is as always evocative, fascinating, capable of imparting an archaic and mystical aura to his proverbial metal mentis.

The undeniable technique of the trio is not the only winning asset of a work that, despite its gargantuan running time, does not manage to tire even for a moment. This is because the tracks never become oppressive (understandable since Di Donato belongs to the old school that does not love to indulge in gratuitous excesses to shock the listener), but they remain firmly mounted on an heavy/doom with counter-fires that, while keeping the song format, is continually illuminated by the Abruzzese artist’s guitarist flair, a forge of imposing riffs and sparks of an hysteria betraying his progressive verve. It’s obvious that over this structure are built all those theme variations that make a genre like doom unique and inimitable, in which, while nothing actually happens, it seems everything might materialize at any moment. And indeed, all the tracks play on the skillful alternation of catchy riffs, cadenced phases, and bombastic developments, without obviously losing sight of the melody. And on these bases, as mentioned earlier, here unfolds a solo that brings us light, or everything collapses into a decay of guitar that would horrify the most evil of blacksters, or, yet again, the gates of horror open with the echo of death bells, terrifying voices sped up or slowed down, stage tricks worthy of Houdini!

Take the almost seven minutes of “Steno” or the eight of “Occumbere Mortem” (what a sublime title!) and tell me I’m not right: in these cases it’s evident the progressive attitude is there but crushed by the sabbathian Word, darkened by those horror metal atmospheres that cannot but bring to mind the most sepulchral Mercyful Fate, especially for the horrifying falsettos or effected voices: music that didn’t need orchestras and full choirs to instill terror and anguish, but only the sizzling of guitars, the dark looming of the bass, the uncertain limping of the drums.

There are also true and proper salvos, like “Pegasus” and “Serpentis,” evil hybrids of Motorhead and Judas Priest, episodes by no means memorable, yet always functional to break up a discourse made of foggy settings.

Foggy settings: interesting in this regard is the last portion of the album. The instrumental “Altamir,” a true progressive jewel of the work, opens another exploratory passage within the undertaken journey: its celestial keyboards, evoking a perverse new-age of the Underworld, soar and dance in flight weighted by shovel-loads of guitar that drag a track back to the Inferno, a track that could have been written in 1976 by a Battiato possessed by the Devil. The next step will be the fourteen minutes of the instrumental “Metamorphoses,” divided into four movements, one more overwhelming than the other, so much so it seems like listening to Ufomammut, with all their strength and compressed sounds typical of new generations. In detail:

1. An organ returns that seems played by the ghost of Charles Tiring of the defunct Jacula; followed by the wheezing of a distorted bass, the creaking of a narcoleptic guitar, the racket of dusty bronze bells, a rickety double bass drum…

2. From the crypt beneath your bed (of whose existence you were unaware) rises the usual bass roar, urged on by ritual drumming that suddenly transforms into the elephantine gait of a pachyderm crushed by the lava flows of a guitar on the brink of decay;

3. The organ revives for a brief interlude: it’s the turn of a formidable guitar march that slightly raises the tension, advancing without great developments for another handful of minutes;

4. The feeble huffing of a flute preludes the final act, dragging us forever into oblivion at the rotten sound of electric arpeggios, slow-motion smashed cymbals, and tar-coated riffs, gradually enriched by pseudo-solos played by a sort of embalmed Jimi Hendrix.

What can be said, the old school is still the old school!