Verdena
Requiem

I lie down on the bed and start listening to this new album by the Lombard trio…

I'm not a big fan of them, I appreciated their debut album but then over time I drifted away… Too unoriginal I told myself, too always the same… I immediately notice a detail, the album is not immediately catchy, it takes a while to digest it and this is not a flaw at all…

After an intro made of explosions and screams, "Don Callisto" begins, an enveloping chaos with the voice of singer Alberto scratching in the background. Then comes "Non prendere l'acme, Eugenio" (a clear Floydian reference), quite dreamlike but still with a lot of grunge influence. The subsequent "Angie" (another famous reference?) is a little gem that with a pleasant melody shows a morbid sweetness giving a sensation of slight madness.. "Aha" is a percussive interlude that anticipates "Isacco Nucleare" perhaps the song closest to Verdena's classic style. "Canos" arrives, another highlight of the album with a great arrangement drawing from the tradition of Italian music but making it very modern.

"Il Gulliver" eleven minutes of anguish and solitude. I stare at the ceiling and "Muori Delay" starts, drawing heavily from classic hard rock, very Led Zeppelin-like, it gets into your head at the first listen and stays there… After this nice adrenaline rush, another good slow one is needed, and here it comes: "Trovami un modo semplice di uscirne" certainly not the best of the album but always with that sensation of heartrending sweetness… "Il caos strisciante" is perfectly described by the title and needs no further comment. The album closes with "Sotto prescrizione del dott. Huxley" which perfectly describes the mental instability that affects many people in our modern society…

One must admit that Verdena manage to unravel what is inside our souls, describing our lives with violence, madness but also sweetness…

With this album, they demonstrate significant growth and prove to be one of the best bands on the Italian scene.