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Rating: "Bunch of filthy pigs!" is the greeting we receive from a smiling Mazza as he makes his entrance on the stage of the Expo area at the Festa de L'Unità in Ospedaletto (Pisa).
Long hair, graying beard, bright red summer shirt, shorts, and sandals: Mazza is always Mazza. The signs of time have worn the historic frontman of Tossic, but not his intrinsic foolishness: even if for a few, his presence cannot help but warm the heart, so much is the hilarity and desire to mess around that he emits.
It is a welcomed return for Tossic, a legendary band from Pisa returning to the music world with the recent "Transumanza" after a break lasting more than ten years. Let me, therefore, take advantage of this live report to present this band that will be unknown to most ears.
Born back in the distant 1987, with a handful of demos and two official albums ("Il Regno del Cinghiale" and "Stato Brado") under their belt, Tossic were reborn in 2007 with the original formation, returning to fill the void their breakup had left behind, and at the same time offering themselves to new generations who, unfortunately for them, did not have the fortune of experiencing them firsthand.
A return, I must say, that does not betray the spirit that has always animated the four metal boars: anti-celebrities by vocation, their music, based on merriment and old-school thrash, continues to harvest victims and gain approvals. The weapons are the same as ever: simplicity, self-irony, and absolute idiocy. The lyrics: childish as always, but not without a certain picaresque brilliance.
A sort of Italian Tankard (but instead of beer and burps, we find burps and that hairy triangle so dear to the male universe), Tossic does not change the history of music, but they know how to play, they know how to be on stage, they know how to entertain and above all they represent a happy island of my childhood, an island I can only look back on with affection and nostalgia (in fact, a Tossic concert was one of the first live events of my life).
There will be no shortage of curses and "viva la topa" (long live pussy), but the merriment of Tossic is not just vulgarity without purpose, it is not an act, but rather spontaneity: unconditional adherence to a way of being that is what it is and cannot be otherwise.
And precisely to celebrate the ancient glories, just to show that not a comma has changed compared to twenty years ago, the opener chosen to kick off tonight's setlist is truly a super classic that all of us veterans cannot help but welcome with extreme enthusiasm: it strikes up the earth-shattering "...Come una Iena", naturally in its uncensored version ("I'm pissed off like a hyena and I spill on your back, I hurt you so much because I am a big animal, with one gesture I am sure, tonight I will smash your ass!").
What is most astonishing, however, is rediscovering an energetic, well-shaped, and harmonious band despite the forced stop that lasted so many years. Asma (guitar) and Satana (bass), despite their appearances as ordinary forty-something fathers, weave a profusion of riffs, drawing fully from the cauldron of eighties thrash metal (Slayer-Testament-Metallica first and foremost), without disdaining Sabbath-like slides that continually reaffirm a mindset of bygone times. Anthony-Inseranto (drums), who meanwhile has had the opportunity to keep in shape playing in the much better-known Death’SS, also delivers a powerful and precise performance.
But there is no need to say it, it is Mazza's bawdy charisma that reigns supreme on stage. More in the skits between songs, to be honest, than in singing (his performance is inferior compared to the last Pisa date about two months ago). Even if not in top form, and at times spent, Mazza, who also jokes about his physical endurance, still confirms himself as a respectable frontman: he plays with the audience, doesn’t spare off-color jokes, and launches into antics worthy of the most vulgar of cabarets.
Ample space is given to tracks from the recent "Transumanza", which seem to withstand the comparison with classics from the past: following are "Cai TV", (an amusing examination of the advent of digital TV and its repercussions on the art of masturbation, the real risk being that, among so many channels, one might end up having a wank on History Channel!), "St. Honoré" (nothing more than a string of French words commonly used in Italian: a bullshit song, as rightly introduced by Mazza), "Suka" (oral sex lessons for the nineteen-year-old son who, dealing with his girlfriend, asks the "wise" father for advice), "Be' mi tempi" (a truly sublime text, one of the best ever written by the Pisano combo and impossible to reproduce in writing and outside the incredible interpretation of Mazza!).
There is also room for a rap piece (not a new experience in Tossic's house, if one looks at "Raspa Rap" in "Stato Brado"): a truly enjoyable parenthesis that saw Anthony also contribute behind the microphone, and which, far from outraging the purists of the truest metal, actually brought hilarity in abundance. "Rappazzo" is the usual unmentionable sequence of sexual obscenities: really vulgar is the chorus sung by the two who tune in unison to heart-wrenching verses of love like "Dear, open your heart, 'cause I'll open your ass!" A piece that Mazza, explains himself, felt like writing at forty!
But no need to say it, it is the classics of the past that truly warm the spirits: "Sudo ma godo" is a timeless masterpiece, an intense Slayer-like assault concerning Mazza's sexual exploits as he hits on a chick ("now I will unleash it, like a hawk on prey I will pounce, but you strangely look towards me, laughing saying is this all, the naive is me who believed you were crazy, I realized you touched more balls than Panatta"). And at the end of the piece, given the audience of newcomers, Mazza feels compelled to clarify that Panatta was once a tennis champion.
"Zona Calva" (from "Stato Brado") and then the deadly medley that includes three other classics, in order "Agguato a Condor Pasa", "Orco", and "Heado", fused together in the name of absolute idiocy.
Cover by an author with "Snap your Finger" by Prong, and then a tight final rush with the classics of the repertoire: "Catarro Tricolore", according to Mazza, the anthem of all the unfortunate of Italy waking up after a night full of cigs and joints ("Italian phlegm, national phlegm, Italian phlegm, tricolor phlegm, the white of saliva, the green of mucus, and the red of blood"). A happy surprise is the reprisal at the end of a never-published song, discarded a thousand and one times and finally retrieved and brought to light by popular demand: the self-congratulatory "Tossic" (The Metal Boars!!!), fast and punkish, an anthem to be sung at the top of your lungs.
But Mazza begins to rummage inside a huge Ikea bag. It is the end, and it could not miss Her, the classic par excellence of Tossic, that "Cazzi di Pane" which for twenty years has closed our setlists. Following is the inevitable launching of bread dicks (kneaded and prepared by Satana himself, says Mazza, because those prepared by the baker are like olive rolls: too soft if one wanted to do particular pranks with one's girlfriend).
"I get dressed, who knows why, nothing done, not even for you, and when ready, when it goes well, I ask you where the bidet is, humiliated like a mule who brays when whipped, you know you haven't won the war, only a battle, I take pride in my finger, in its healthy teats, I am served and revered, in the copper cups, the copper cups, bread dicks, bread dicks for you!" With these words concludes a truly entertaining evening, in the name of cheerfulness, good music, and nostalgia.
Long live the metal boars!
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