Trinacria
Travel Now Journey Infinitely

The Trinacria are a group that deserves a special introduction. This is a side-project born from members of Enslaved (Ivar Bjornson and Arve Isdal on guitar, Grutle Kjellson on vocals), Fe-mail (Maja S. K. Ratkje and Hild Sofie Tafjord handle samples and keyboards), Emmerhoff (Iver Sandoy on drums) and Slut Machine (Espen Lien on bass). These musicians come from different musical backgrounds, but their influences all merge in this super-group active since 2005, which debuted this year with "Travel Now Journey Infinitely" for the Indie Recordings label.

A truly exceptional and hard-to-categorize debut by the Norwegian group: an extremely experimental and contaminated black metal by diverse genres such as industrial, noise, and which doesn't shy away from sludge/post-core slowdowns and psychedelic digressions. The 6 tracks of the album are generally very long, all around 7-9 minutes (excluding the fifth "Breach"), characterized by generally slow and oppressive rhythms but without giving up on frenzied accelerations typical of black metal. The riffing is obsessive, monolithic, and repetitive, reaching a climate of true paranoia also favored by an esoteric, desolate, and dark atmosphere that, when least expected, bursts into sheer noise.

The opener "Turn Away," with its 9 minutes duration, could very well have been taken from "Pure" or "Selfless" by Godflesh: infinitely repeated riffs, slow, icy, and distant, without particular changes in melody or tempo, supported by a cadenced drum. The following "The Silence" is, along with "Make No Mistake", the fastest track of the album: the pace increases dramatically and is regularly disrupted by short noisy interludes reminiscent of Merzbow, rendering the structure of the song very fragmented and, on first listens, almost nonsensical. The noise increases till mid-track to give way suddenly to a brief acoustic section that increases in intensity until the end. And after the third track, which structurally does not deviate much from the already mentioned "The Silence", the album decidedly changes atmosphere. "Endless Roads" and the title track could have been written by the masters Neurotics: the doomy drums, the desolate and suffering mood that permeates the riffs, the vocals used, and the psychedelic influences are the trademark of Steve Von Till and his associates. "Breach", with its almost 5 minutes duration, is a tribal crescendo of tension and apocalyptic atmosphere that seems never to culminate; a typical solution of many sludge/post-core albums that are making inroads into the hearts of many modern extreme music enthusiasts.

The will of Trinacria to experiment, shape entirely original sounds, and vary the tracks from one another is evident and certainly deserves praise. On the other hand, however, the album risks becoming difficult, at times redundant and disjointed, as the numerous influences of the band seem to not have been balanced in the right way. The noise that permeates much of the work (especially the first half) risks becoming annoying in the long run, excessively weighing down the listening experience and leaving little room for the enjoyment of what is nevertheless a valid work, presenting several interesting ideas.

In summary, "Travel Now Journey Infinitely" is a notable debut that shows a band with much to say, a bit raw and challenging at times, but that deserves more than one listen to be fully understood. As our artists accumulate more experience and mastery of their capabilities over time, we can expect great surprises from this interesting project.