The Damned
The Black Album

LA RECENSIONE

1980, the first wave of UK punk is already nicely buried.
The phenomenon that transformed world music irrevocably and without much regret abdicates to new sounds.
The dark/gothic influences creep in, alternating with new formations and post/punk bands in mainstream and trendy TV appearances on Top Of The Pop and memorable sessions at the late John Peel's house.
The new wave is ready.

After a crazy and fragmented yet unrepeatable album like Machine Gun Etiquette, in less than four years, the Damned physically move from the center of the tornado to being overwhelmed by it.
Technically, they are finished, with debts and few hopes of making a comeback.
Far from the nihilistic stereotype, hardly politicized, clownish in nature, and simultaneously grave, they gather their last strengths and resources (and especially a new bassist) and pack everything into the band's beat-up Vauxhall Cavalier, headed for Wales.
The Rockfield studios will be their rebirth.

Vanian, Sensible, Scabies & Gray initiate the true second incarnation of the band through an eclectic album with an unmistakable sound.
The result remains beyond any label, a courageous blend of nocturnal cinematic visions, reflections of youthful discontent, and mockeries over four sides.
The final mockery is precisely the decision to deliver a double album with a third side containing a hybrid track of dark, psychedelic prog, and punk over 17 minutes long: Curtain Call, a piece capable of bringing down the curtain on everything previously produced.
Not bad for a group that just four years earlier opened tracks with the much more prosaic....1...2...3...4! (read them in English please)

Having found Hans Zimmer by the roadside (the future Oscar® who would over-produce a piece like History of The World Pt.1) in production, the sound turns out mature and consolidated on the supporting pillars of the increasingly crooner-like Dave Vanian, Captain Sensible's acrobatic guitar incursions, Rat Scabies' incendiary madness, and Paul Gray's lifesaving metronome.

From the punk grave (on the cover) to resurrection.

Recommended for those who:

• Punk is just 3 chords!
• Peter Murphy is my gothic hero!
• Captain Sensible is the one who did a track with Piotta!