The Bone Machine
Sotto Questo Cielo Nero

Rock'n'roll or death, maybe it's just a variant of rock'n'roll that saves your life.

This is how the new album by The Bone Machine, «Sotto Questo Cielo Nero», begins, which is pure and simple rock'n'roll devastation, or rather roccherrolle, which sounds better.

It takes very little to introduce them: Jack Cortese, voice and guitar, Big Daddy Rot, double bass, Black Macigno, drums; their faces perpetually covered by the inevitable luchadores masks; they come from Aprilia and have been causing trouble since 1999.

Even easier to say what they play: an infernal mix that involves everyone, absolutely everyone, from Johnny Burnette to Tom Waits, as long as it's roccherolle, all blended with the attitude of novel Cramps, for the sound and the imagery. In the mix, Fred Buscaglione also ends up because here it’s rock'n'roll sung in Italian with the genre's genuine reckless swagger, and inevitably the Ramones, because for fifteen years The Bone Machine has been singing the same song and doing it great.

And that song endlessly tells the story of the undertaker Jimmy Scavafosse who fills coffins all day, digs graves, and cheerfully lowers those coffins; and then, when the day is over, he sneaks off to the swamp to play his zombie rock’n’roll for his girl; but, while he's having fun, the zombies really come out of the graves and they too stagger towards the swamp to go wild to the exorcist's twist and surf.

Jimmy's music is genuine fun, pure 1950s rock'n'roll, but the noisy, fast, and out of control kind, like the stuff Johnny Kidd and Dwight Pullen used to sing and play in the good old days, with daddy Lux Interior cursing from the deep hell he has plunged himself into.

As for the lyrics, well, yes, the lyrics.

Anyone who thinks that rock'n'roll can't be sung in Italian has probably missed, in addition to Fred Buscaglione, Adriano Celentano too, of whom The Bone Machine covers «Il Ribelle»; so to fix that, give a listen to what Jimmy Scavafosse plays, maybe you'll change your mind and find yourself, who knows how, at the edges of the usual swamp, or not, and for you, there’s a red-lined coffin ready, and Jimmy Scavafosse will lower you into the grave tomorrow.

Then what Jimmy Scavafosse sings about is easy to guess: «Noi Siamo Zombie», «Corsa All’Inferno», «Nella Fredda Terra», «Un Altro Sorso Di Veleno», «Scavo La Mia Fossa», it's more than enough not to ask further.

You can like it or dislike it, just like an Ed Wood film or any zeta series sci-fi fished out from the black hole of the fifties.

This stuff drives me crazy, and The Bone Machine drives me crazy; many others despise this kind of stuff; and that is why so far, only a few of us have bought The Bone Machine's albums, and at concerts we’re the usual zombies who all know each other by now.

But give Jimmy a chance before consigning him back to his worthy work of the digger; because otherwise, maybe you're already dead, and you don't know it.