Valerio Evangelisti
Metallo Urlante

"Metal as a symptom of the cooling of human relationships. The appearance of a cold humanity in emotional expressions. It's the theme of almost all my books and the greatest fear when I look around [...] My books are not reassuring, they are a sort of electroshock, with a paradoxical charge of violence." (Valerio Evangelisti).

Future.....

Screaming metal, and no longer a screaming man. Man has now been denied the ability to scream: the last time he will have emitted this inarticulate, fierce, desperate, and full of life sound will have been when he saw his humanity transfer into what he himself created, completing his dehumanization. It is at that point that metal, the base material for new beings, screamed to the sky its birth and future ascent: Prometheus unbound, the new technological Christ, man no longer Man.

Past.....

A conscious witness of this transformation is the writer, essayist, historian, and screenwriter from Bologna Valerio Evangelisti. Since 1994, the year of publication of his first novel "Nicolas Eymerich, Inquisitor," he has been enjoying intertwining history and science fiction through different yet complementary timelines: within a single Evangelisti novel, one can be catapulted from the dark medieval era of the 1300s torn by power struggles and ancient heretical sects to our present and to the most remote future made of interstellar voyages and quantum leaps. A set of themes and a way of re-elaborating them that is extremely entertaining and enjoyable, never banal, and extremely personal, especially in Italy where science fiction literature, or something a little more peculiar, has always remained on the sidelines. The new character of Evangelisti, with his set of stories named "Eymerich Cycle," managed to bring prestige to a genre and bring to the surface a whole undergrowth of young (or not so young) authors eager to tell their hallucinatory stories.

Present.....

Four years and five novels later (with more to follow, always about the inquisitor), a new cycle begins: the "Cycle of Metal". To date, it essentially consists of two novels and a collection of stories: "Black Flag," "Anthracite," and "Screaming Metal." Three books that can be read independently of each other, but that nevertheless constitute an inseparable whole if one wants to understand the world described by Evangelisti: a world completely or partially dehumanized, where gangs of outcasts without a future ("Black Flag"), almost human armies dominated by technology ("Screaming Metal"), unscrupulous industrial magnates and continuous ethnic hostilities ("Anthracite") are the absolute protagonists. Evangelisti's pen fascinatingly and evocatively sketches a schizoid, hallucinatory and ambiguous society, where men do not recognize each other as brothers but as eternal enemies: the law of the strongest has now been established, and this regression of humanity to a primitive age is moreover highlighted by the reappearance of ancient gods and monsters, symbols of an archaic and mythical bestiality never completely extinguished.
Whether the narrative action is set during the American Civil War as in "Black Flag" (title taken directly from the American punk band), ten years later as in "Anthracite," or on different timelines as the stories in "Screaming Metal," the author's message does not change: it's hardly worth rebelling; man is destined to perish from the blows he is self-inflicting.
Blows that delve deeper into his own being and will transform him in the truest sense of the word....

Temporal Continuum: that thin silver line (intermezzo).....

...into what is still unclear, although the author lets us infer it. To do so, to outline this new possible human physiognomy, he plays with history: history passed through a space-time tunnel, dismembered, distorted, and stitched together thanks to the thin metallic silver line that upholds the fate of the various characters of "Screaming Metal."
Four stories (plus an eponymous epilogue of the first story and an appendix): four atoms of particular substances that collide, screech, fuse, and scream creating a new metallic alloy whose glow, however, shines from the past of human history.
Venom: like the poison flowing mixed with the blood of members of ancient esoteric cults, ready to unleash a devastating plague in the heart of 14th-century Europe against which the astute and cold Nicolas Eymerich must fight...like the virus that centuries and centuries later, in another place and time, will lead men to sterility and a new union with metal to avoid perishing.
Pantera: your God is powerless before the absurd manifestations of cosmic forces, fueled by the hatred men feel for one another, leading them to death and madness. Cynical in a world of cynics, wolf among wolves, Pantera has only his revolver and the cult of Palo Mayombe: that's all that is needed in the Wild West.
Sepultura: hell in comparison is a much more welcoming place. A maximum-security prison and a modern Dantean circle: Sepultura represents the ultimate place, where men invoke only death, for life is a distant memory....
Metallica: false religions have brought the United States to collapse, confronting men in a war that seems eternal. No mutual respect, no remorse, no humanity: "kill them all" is the first commandment. And meanwhile, the shine of metal on flesh is now a reality on its own.....

Future 2.0.....

The process is complete, the chemical bond now altered. Evangelisti's electroshock still flows within us like an alienating virus, bearer of a new word: new word also for Italian fantastic literature (and not only), which finds one of its best representations in this small anthology, as well as, in my opinion, the best book conceived by the Bolognese author. "Screaming Metal," which pays homage to a famous French comic magazine "Métal Hurlant," is the first protein of the metal cycle, later expanded by the other two previously mentioned novels: critique of society, science, religion, biology, and psychological ramifications serve as basic elements for this long acidic chain, alienating as a drug and unsettling because it is so close to our reality and a possible future.....

Try to scream now