Van Canto
A Storm to Come

LA RECENSIONE

Tell me it's a joke...

Damn internet with your detours, sudden reminders, bridges, and dangerous links, you've made me, once again, understand that there's no limit to indecency!

Everyone must have experienced being on a site, where there's a link that takes you to X page where there's another link that opens a YouTube frame, well, it's more or less how I came to know about these Van Canto, reckless Germans probably still dazed and never recovered from the two thrashings we dealt them at the last World Cup.

You all probably remember Neri Per Caso, those friendly guys from Salerno who with their a cappella singing brightened up a couple of summers before disappearing into oblivion. No instruments but just their harmonized voices creating, among a "tichetunk tichetunk, badabum badabum, tekedè tekedè", melodies suitable as a "last song in the shower" frivolous and light, perfect for refreshing us from the summer heat. Well, now imagine that this technique, which by the way I remind you wasn’t invented by Neri Per Caso, is applied to the most banal, predictable, repetitive, and pulverized Teutonic power metal made of bombastic and epic choruses with swords raised to the sky and women rubbing against your furry boots.... Five idiots singing (or rather four idiots and one idiotess) plus a drummer who with their "rakka-takka-rakka-takka-rakka-takka" try to recreate the sound of symphonic and epic power guitars just right, alternating with the usual epic choruses that get on your nerves.

It's always commendable that there's someone who wants to innovate a genre, the power metal, which with 15 albums has said everything it had and could say, but these completely fail in the intent contributing, as if needed, to further ridicule it.

It’s natural that this genre was immediately rebranded as Hero metal a cappella but fortunately, it seems that, apart from Van Canto, it hasn't gained further followers.

Let's take a look at The Mission to understand the uselessness and absurdity of the offer, with the clarification that these people really take themselves seriously, or let ourselves be overwhelmed by the epic choruses of Rain or get carried away by King or even be sodomized by the useless cover of Battery by Metallica.

I think that after these obscenities, the desire to joke is gone for everyone...