Void Of Silence
The Grave of Civilization

And so I found myself on the brink of suicide, when, wandering through a terrible and humid August evening, I stumbled upon "Human Antithesis": the signs of the End were truly vivid, for some time I hadn't purchased metal, except sporadically and at the cost of burdensome feelings of guilt, and for this reason, I threw myself at the then latest work of the Roman Void of Silence, like a condemned man indulges in the last treat, the last meal to be consumed with resigned greed.

But things took a different turn, the days of Darkness passed, and I, submerged and staggering in the abyss, began to climb back up, hand in hand with Zara and Conforti, day after day, dragged with difficulty, then more and more willingly, by the comforting coils of their music. Art, I learned, no matter how decadent, no matter how void of light, no matter how void of hope and filled with disillusionment, is Life. And for me, the music of Void of Silence was Life, which managed to thrill me once more, due to those strange games of Destiny (Fate, Human Idiocy) that no one can explain.

Exactly six years have passed, perhaps that evening was August 4th, who remembers, and today my life is much improved. With the calmness of a raccoon, I can now approach analyzing this awaited latest work by Void of Silence, of which I hadn't felt the absence, but now I can't do without it.

I always struggle to have a comprehensive view of albums that I have listened to little and that I don't feel I have adequately metabolized. But I wanted to write this review myself because of the importance the band had in certain phases of my existence.

Indeed, I remain primarily attached to "Human Antithesis", but delving into the past (and discovering the present now), I can justifiably claim that with their solid four albums, the band of Ivan Zara and Riccardo Conforti can confidently be considered among the best metal realities that have ever flourished from Italian soil. But the "light" (so to speak) emanated by a massive work like "Human Antithesis" remains, which literally scorches the earth around it: an album that was able to sweep away the even good past with a single breath, and which, at least to this day, I believe casts a significant shadow on the future.

With "The Grave of Civilization", our musicians maintain excellent levels, but they are unable to repeat the masterpiece they managed to produce back in 2004. "The Grave of Civilization" is inferior in everything to its predecessor: it is conceptually inferior, inferior in sound, inferior in how ideas are developed, in how the identity of the individual compositions is constructed, simply inferior because there is no longer Alan Nemtheanga. For this round, the vocalist chosen by the indomitable duo is Brooke Johnson (voice of Axis of Perdition), perhaps the least appropriate among all who have lent their voice to the project, even less fitting than the rancid and putrid Fabban, who despite his glaring vocal imperfections, had still lent a malevolent and sickly aura to the band's funerary moves. Nemtheanga, the dark singer of unspeakable afflictions, doesn't even tie his shoes.

The Grave of Civilization" is therefore inferior to "Human Antithesis". Or perhaps simply different. Or perhaps it still needs a bit of time to be understood.

As I mentioned at the beginning, I lack a clear overall vision, but I can certainly spend a few words: despite the cover (in my opinion, one of the most beautiful ever seen in the history of rock), constructed on icy neofascist architectures, we do not stand before a cynical and splendid monument of sadness like "Human Antithesis", but rather a liquid and impalpable sound, a slow and unstoppable stream of ecstatic visions. The sublime apocalyptic doom of Void of Silence finally shakes off the last residues of black metal (still traceable in some guitar phrasings of the always valid Ivan Zara) and dares to renounce the massive dose of industrial samples that have always characterized the Roman band. The apocalyptic doom of Void of Silence ends up settling midway between the languid marches of godfathers My Dying Bride and the dramatic pathos of the less ironic Arcturus, obviously soaked in the Nothing of an auteur dark-ambient that has always been the band's trademark.

And so, the sloppy guitars of Ivan Zara lie on the imposing keyboard textures of the ever-immense Riccardo Conforti. And upon them rests Johnson's clean voice, which can range far and wide (though losing his way at times) on compositions that average over ten minutes. Because Void of Silence does not like to rush. And I'm not saying this because Void of Silence takes six years to release their latest work. I'm not saying this because the album, with its mere six pieces (including even a brief introduction and an equally brief conclusion), dares to last for over an hour. I say this because what other group would have their singer begin to ramble on in the eighth minute of a composition? (This happens in "Apt Epitaph", the third track of the album!). I say this, finally, because "The Grave of Civilization" is not an album for a quick listen, not something to be played on an I-pod in people's spare time! "The Grave of Civilization" requires a bed and a lot, a lot of time. So take a vacation and plunge into its listening!

"Prelude to the Death of Hope" (a title, a plan) perfectly introduces the mood of the work: distorted guitars, walls of keyboards heavy as tons, the Gregorian chant of a choir of bewildered monks intent on weaving their final call to the faithful as the cathedral crumbles above their heads, columns and capitals collapse, and the pavement under them seems to sink into catatonic abysses (run bastards, run!). All of this invites us to traverse the contorted mazes of an album that sounds to us as the perfect soundtrack of the end of the world: not a mystical, spiritual, human world, but a concrete world, made of cement, buildings, disordered streets, waste, and ruins.

The delirious chanting of a muezzin opens the monumental title-track, seventeen steep minutes of an emotional precipice in which the sensation is that of tragically, tensely, plunging. The otherwise good Johnson lets himself slip into freefall where the fragments of civilization topple alongside it in an apparently endless abyss. And into it plunge the pasty guitars of Zara, swirling in pachydermic concentric circles, like tarred leaves that sway in the Nothing of a nightmare autumn that the cinematic keyboards of the outstanding Conforti recreate with meticulous elasticity: orchestrations that rise and fall in the fog while the rusted riffing remains glued to the ground, until digging deep grooves like a metaphysical compass's tips.

In the already mentioned "Apt Epitaph" (twelve minutes), a true jam session of the abyss is accomplished, the swirling guitars launch into sizzling vortices of black metal; the drums no longer act as a clock that slowly marks the passage of centuries-long suffering, if not millennia: the percussion becomes more stumbling, tottering, and seems to drown in the slime of blood and asphalt spewed out by the amplifiers of Our musicians. Johnson's singing lives very late, only to be buried again in the Sabbathian mantra that proceeds inexorably on its path, leveling everything, human lives, corpses, skeletons of decaying structures. There's plenty of stuff in sixty-two minutes of music: overwhelming moments of cold electronics, acoustic explorations of the void, resigned restarts towards nothingness.

In all this, those folk-apocalyptic elements we loved in the past have not been found (except in the concluding track, opened by an arpeggio that will surely delight Death in June's fans). But the apocalyptic mood remains, indeed!, just listen to the opening of "Temple of Stagnation" (ten minutes!), opened by Johnson's fearless and surreal cries, which seem to struggle and fight against a storm, as if Void of Silence were not playing individual instruments, but a single, cursed instrument, intent solely and exclusively on spreading sounds devoid of joy and hope. Without a rational structure capable of stemming the onset of emotions. And if Void of Silence evolves, it does so precisely in the desire to define a single sound in which the various parts only contribute to a deadly ensemble effect: rotting riffs, thick orchestrations, shadowy gallops depicted in slow motion, a voice that seems to emanate from the megaphone of the last man on earth; everything mingles in a viscous current where it is possible to see the cracked ivory keys of a piano float here and there. Because if Void of Silence evolves, it does so by never knowing how to say the word End, by never knowing how to halt the fall, because every subsequent moment of each composition marks another terrible notch of an inexorable decline.

"None Shall More" (fifteen minutes!) opens with the calm of guitar arpeggios, and it almost feels like pausing for a moment on the flat surface of a step, but it is only a brief sensation, because before long Void of Silence will pour more pitch over our rolling body, a body now fractured and devoid of bones, a shell of flesh and feelings that will, almost liquefied, crash down like a disorganized cascade upon the spiral steps of a bottomless pit.

But, also physically, it couldn't last forever, and so the word End is provided by the brief outro "Empthy Echo", which, far from letting us rest in our wounds, will lead us to an infinitely vain conclusion through a tragic fade. Towards Nothing. Or towards the Beginning.

For this reason, despite everything, it makes you want to press play and continue falling...

It took you six years, sons of bitches!, but for works like this, I will wait another twelve!