Disciplinatha - War songs for a New World

DISCIPLINATHA is not a pro-Soviet group

DISCIPLINATHA is not a pro-American group

DISCIPLINATHA is not a pro-Chinese group

DISCIPLINATHA is not a pro-Chilean group

and finally DISCIPLINATHA is not a pro-fascist group

DISCIPLINATHA is not pro-anything, it does not back a party, an idea, not even a given, prefabricated, structured, settled nostalgia

DISCIPLINATHA criticizes and negates, and as such it will be criticized and negated

(band press release)

Disciplinatha are the only Italian band worth listening to

(Jello Biafra)

Preamble: notes for a history of black-tinged rock

Among the countless paths one could take through this socio-musical Babel, we want to propose the most dangerous excursion of all: mapping the occasions on which musicians, clearly meaning to talk about something else entirely, made use of an iconographic apparatus traceable back to the milieu of the extreme right. The subject is rich in implications, given the dual - transgressive and progressive - nature that popular wisdom tends to attribute to rock music (we'll skip over how superficial and partly inaccurate this widespread belief actually is). If stirring up political ambiguity is a cheap temptation for a language that feeds on provocation, summoning certain ghosts becomes a slippery business. Not only because of their intrinsically objectionable nature, but also because doing so ends up breaking a kind of unwritten code: if rock must coincide with libertarian instances, then it's an unforgivable breach of conduct to play into the enemy's hands. The mixed, not to say violent, reception that has always greeted such operations is proof of just how exposed this nerve is.

Over the years, these destabilizing strategies have been deployed for multiple purposes and in multiple ways. A first striking case could be traced back to Sweet's appearance on an episode of "Top Of The Pops" in 1973, during which, amid a riot of paillettes and sequins, bassist Steve Priest proudly showed off a Nazi uniform: little more than an exercise in bad taste, in keeping with the excesses of glam then dominant.

This childish attitude, later adopted by early punk (one case above all, the strategic swastikas with which Jamie Reid branded the public image of Sex Pistols), changed sign entirely during the years of political awareness that defined hardcore: for Dead Kennedys, MDC, Reagan Youth and other anti-system bands, invoking the totalitarian specter was an act of sabotage meant to unmask the regime en travesti that Reagan's America had become. Similarly, conceptual terrorists like Residents and Throbbing Gristle juxtaposed advertising imagery with debris of 20th-century propaganda, following the old equation consumerism = new fascism.

Yet in those very same years, a perverse fascination also lingered for an aesthetic - somewhere between militaristic and neo-pagan - found in much "dark" rock, from darkwave (Joy Division) to industrial (Whitehouse, Boyd Rice) all the way to that controversial galaxy known as the neofolk movement (Death In June chief among them); how much of this was mere surface posturing and how much was a symptom of genuine ideological allegiance remains an open question, though not a particularly relevant one for our analysis (for the same reasons, we're deliberately leaving out phenomena like Oi!). A case apart is that of Slovenia's Laibach, who, not without controversy, built their whole program around the resemanticization of codes and symbols tied to the last century's totalitarian regimes, in order to lay bare the painful contradictions of a Europe (especially Eastern and Balkan Europe) emerging from the Cold War; on a similar wavelength, fellow countrymen Borghesia, who emphasized the morbid fetish-homoerotic fantasy of the uniform.

An entire encyclopedia wouldn't be enough, meanwhile, to map all the "right-wing" incursions into metal territory, a traditionally more reactionary field where tolerance for certain lapses runs higher: from the wartime memorabilia of Slayer to the Norse nazi-satanism so dear to old school black metal. Finally, there have been cases where purely satirical songs, if not outright antifascist in intent, were misread as apologia: it's obligatory to mention at least "Der Mussolini" (1981) by Deutsch-Amerikanische Freundschaft and "Il Duce" (1985) by Big Black, whose blunt titles proved too conspicuous a calling card to escape the arrows of militant critics.

To shock, to provoke reflection, to conjure up powerful images: whatever the reason, once certain references are thrown onto the table, no one goes unnoticed. And if handling such incandescent material stirs up resentment pretty much everywhere, doing so in a country like Italy (which experienced fascism for real, with a subsequent constitutional ban) can become such a thorny affair that it derails a career. Just consider the case of Museo Rosenbach, a glory of Italian progressive rock, whose debut "Zarathustra" (1973) was blacklisted by the fiercely partisan scene of the time, partly over the bust of Mussolini inserted into the cover collage, and partly over the perennial misreading that dogs the Nietzschean themes on which the album is built.

Far from discouraging it, this paranoid fear has only fueled the poisoned imagination of many anarchist punks: memorable is the late Luca Abort of Nerorgasmo, one of the symbol-bands of Turin hardcore, who in 1993 took the stage dressed as a Nazi and launched into a genuine countercultural harangue, denouncing the hypocrisy of a society that "gets scandalized by a swastika worn around the neck as a provocation, but should pay a bit more attention to what's going on around it and the way it lives... because if we really look at our society, it's all fascist!"

In the late '90s, an article in the German weekly "Der Spiegel" caused a stir by criticizing several bands on the European goth scene for their political ambiguity: among them were Parma's own Kirlian Camera, accused of giving the Roman salute on stage. More recently, the proposal put forward by Genoa's Ianva, with the concept album "Disobbedisco!" (2006), inspired by the Fiume Enterprise, sparked heated debate and split the national alternative scene in two.

Sometimes it only takes an ambiguous name to spark a brawl: just ask Camerata Mediolanense, a Milanese neoclassical outfit whose 2008 concert was disrupted by some left-wing activists, even though their music has nothing to do with politics and their name simply refers to the informal gatherings where 16th-century noblemen discussed art. By contrast, there's very little room for interpretation in the proclamations of Frangar, a Novara-based offshoot of the NSBM (National Socialist Black Metal) movement.

Nevertheless, no band (in Italy, and perhaps anywhere in the world) has ever managed to ride that black beast in a way quite so unpleasant, terrifying and brilliant as Disciplinatha, if only because they had the nerve to do it in the very last corner of the globe where playing with such themes could ever seem advisable: Bologna.

Chapter 1: strategic planning (1987)

1987 is, for Italy, a year of profound transformation: the second Craxi government has just fallen, and the country is about to enter a season of marked political instability. In the same period, the preliminaries of the Palermo Maxi Trial are underway, while the situation in the Mediterranean is more charged than ever (these are the years of the Sigonella crisis, the US raid on Tripoli, the deposition of Habib Bourguiba in Tunisia, and the first stirrings of turbulence in Yugoslavia). Within a few years, a series of events on both a national and global scale will sweep away all the structures and certainties consolidated up to that point, but for the moment the country continues to bask in an increasingly unrealistic illusion of well-being, exemplified by the hedonistic myth of "Milano da bere" ("Milan on the rocks"), temple of reflux-era disengagement.

Two hundred kilometers southeast of the Craxi-era mecca, there's another city that refuses to shed its clichés: Bologna under the Imbeni administration stubbornly carries on the line set by predecessor Zangheri, the mayor of neighborhood welfare and the "Youth Plan", of Carmelo Bene performing atop the Torre degli Asinelli and of the Clash in Piazza Maggiore (but also of the disastrous handling of the 1977 protests, complete with tanks deployed against the "autonomi" and sheriff-like powers granted to the notorious magistrate "Katalanotti"). The goal is clear: the Emilian capital (that very year robbed of its innocence by the first raids of the Uno Bianca gang) must go on looking like a kind of "happy island" that has once and for all digested the poisoned pill of the Years of Lead while remaining untouched by the rampant consumerism that is by now the hallmark of the decade. A land where the watchwords are still community and solidarity, where there's room for everyone and every single activity is planned by the city council with and for the citizen.

The propaganda of the hegemonic Communist Party is so pervasive that many are ready to swear Bologna is still "the freest city in the world" (another of Zangheri's celebrated phrases), but it ends up causing a rift precisely with the young people it was trying to win back after the wound left open by the Lorusso affair: a new wave of grassroots initiatives begins to energize the underground, giving rise to gathering places such as Casalone (today Covo) and Isola Nel Cantiere, which hark back to the glory days of "creative" Bologna, the days of Radio Alice and the new wave scene born out of DAMS. But the ones most inclined to turn up their noses at the red monolith are, above all, an isolated handful of kids from the provinces, who view with extreme suspicion not only the machinations of the parties but also the mass activism of "alternative" youth.

This story begins in Bentivoglio (never was a name more ironic), a village of 5,000 souls on the outskirts of Bologna: "The usual bar, the usual football pitch, the usual parish church and the ever-present Communist Party branch." To chase away the boredom, a few kids obsessed with history and "boorish militarism" invent their own way of passing the time: always dressing in uniforms and camouflage ("punk was dead, and we had to find another way to be obnoxious"), spending whole days camping out in extreme settings and organizing pilgrimages to the symbolic sites of the Fascist Ventennio. Theirs is a visceral rejection both of the unquestionable infallibility of Emilian communism and of any imported model: "Some of us couldn't give a damn about going to London to see concerts: we went to Predappio instead."

Three of these kids form a band, Blood: Cristiano Santini on vocals, Marco Maiani on bass and Daniele Albertazzi on drums. But music alone isn't enough for them; they feel they need something more to give shape to an imagery that is taking form, and so, with the help of friend Dario Parisini and the indirect inspiration of an acquaintance who likes to dress up as a fascist official, they decide to also put together a "self-sufficient fanzine" tied to the band's activity, which they call "Fiamma Nera" ("Black Flame"). They're young, and they're punks, and as such they know exactly what their mission has to be: to provoke everyone and everything, always and in any case, whatever the cost. So they choose to bring their material to Bologna during the Festa dell'Unità, leaving it at a stand alongside various other bands. By the end of the event they discover that everything has vanished — not because it was snapped up, but because they find it tossed in the trash, destroyed. Once again they realize there's an unbreachable single mode of thought at work, but they also understand they may have hit on exactly the right nerve.

Shortly afterward Parisini joins permanently as guitarist, and the quartet decides to rename itself with a name as martial as its ideas: Disciplinatha. The circle closes after they see Cccp live: their own show, too, will have to be a multimedia spectacle, involving not just music but also performance and video projections, with the same macaronic verve. The most logical move seems to be getting in touch with the label that launched the careers of Ferretti and Zamboni, Attack Punk Records, run by Jumpy (now Helena) Velena. For some reason, though, at first they're hesitant to pitch their idea directly and prefer to beat around the bush, clearly aware of the disruptive power of what they're about to create: they first pass themselves off as a "pro-Palestinian" project, then "pro-Gaddafi", but in the end they decide to come clean and, against all odds, win the unconditional enthusiasm of the anarchist label, which signs them on the spot. The idea is to build around the band a discourse that is aesthetically coherent and ideologically destabilizing, but also to play the most violent and disturbing music ever heard in Italy up to that point: "Put the posture of the combat boot before the slovenly shuffle of the slipper."

Chapter 2: head-on collision (1988-1990)

Whoever found themselves holding a copy of We've waited patiently for 40 years. Enough is enough! in those days must have had quite a shock — the mini-album with which Disciplinatha launched their offensive against Italian music: on the cover, two stern, stiff-backed "piccole italiane" (young Fascist girl scouts), framed in a pink rectangle; on the back, two smiling "figli della lupa" (young Fascist cub scouts) throwing an awkward Roman salute; inside, a collage of photos and slogans amounting to a total semiotic short-circuit. But the real heart attack, no doubt, must have come after dropping the needle at the start of that milk-white vinyl: a sample of Benito Mussolini's voice roaring the declaration of war on Ethiopia (the source of the phrase that gives the record its title), followed by a murderous piston of guitar and drums and a voice rasping in an inhuman growl, which in the chorus turns into a bestial chant ("A noi! A noi! Addis Abeba"). It's hard to find, in all of Italian rock and beyond, an opening track this blinding: "Addis Abeba" is such a gut-punch that it leaves you stunned, caught between the brutal violence of the music and a message that's either too ambiguous or too clear — either way, unacceptable.

The rest of the record, while it doesn't replicate that formidable opening salvo, doesn't back down an inch either: "Disciplinatha canto del potere" opens with an intoxicating doom whirl topped by a guitar simulating an air-raid siren, then kicks into high gear and rears up into a breathless thrash run; "Milizia" opens with a swarm of electronic radiation coupled with a reverb-soaked drum that evokes the relentless stomp of combat boots, before charging headlong like a panzer in the style of Ministry; the supersonic hardcore of "Retorika" desecrates the TG1 news theme with another Mussolini sample before plunging into a storm of enemy fire; "Leopoli" is a forced march so leaden it rivals the fiercest outbursts of Killing Joke; the closing "Attacco dal cielo", a minute and a half of guitar foam recreating the sounds of an aerial bombardment, is Hendrix reinterpreted by Chrome.

Even today, once the listen is over, you need a moment to cool down to recover from the shock and process the experience. Even purely on a musical level, this is a tangled mess that's not easy to untangle: the basic armor is a testosterone-fueled alloy of industrial metal, hardcore and post-punk, but in the resulting alchemy there's a surplus of meaning stemming from the thoroughly personal (if surprisingly professional, for a debut) way the four approach their instruments, especially in the kamikaze dives of Parisini's almost psychedelic guitar. The reference points are clear, but Disciplinatha sound neither derivative nor dated: for that reason alone, nothing quite like this had ever been heard around here.

But what grabs the attention, needless to say, is above all the staggering staging, so brazen it cannot be ignored. Who are Disciplinatha really, and what are they trying to prove? The first hypothesis, the one that scares us most, is that they might truly be neo-fascists: their little theater, however, appears so leering and smirking that it leads us to discard this all-too-hasty explanation. If it isn't a case of ideological allegiance, then the game must be a pretext, meant to express something else — something that, presumably, has to do with the present. The question becomes: who are Disciplinatha really aiming at? Are they accusing Italy of never having truly reckoned with its cumbersome past, of never having stopped being silently fascist? Are they comparing the Craxi-era eighties to a new regime that aims to numb consciences with the gilded pill of rampant consumerism (as Pasolini taught)? Are they mocking the obtuseness of another paradoxical regime, Red Emilia, where you can say whatever you want as long as it stays within the perimeter of the dominant ideology? Are they poking fun at alternative culture by parodying the band of the moment, those Cccp who, like them, aim to exacerbate the contradictions of the age, replacing their caricatured "pro-Sovietism" with something far more frightening, being a ghost from our own backyard? Do they simply want, like good punks, to break the chains of the forbidden and allow themselves the luxury of joking about a subject too uncomfortable, almost unnameable, something our own Constitution itself stands against? To make us reflect on the very limits of freedom of expression, which wavers when the claws sink into wounds too festering? The point is that Disciplinatha have no intention whatsoever of providing answers, they don't want the numbers to add up — if anything they keep pressing down on the accelerator of ambiguity, firing off contradictory signals from every direction: if they're playing at being self-sufficient nationalists, why are some of the songs sung in English? How to interpret that list of thank-yous, in which Francesca Mambro and Public Enemy, Céline and Anthrax, Lucio Battisti and GG Allin coexist in schizophrenic harmony? And that note attached to the record, in which they express solidarity with all political prisoners, whether of the right or the left? One thing we can be certain of: if we've arrived at so many different questions, it means the provocation has achieved its goal.

But anyone who thinks this already indigestible mix might be enough to appease them clearly doesn't know Disciplinatha (who, in the meantime, have added Valeria Cevolani as backing vocalist). If anything, they put together an even more shocking spectacle during their live performances: a riot of tricolor flags, Ventennio-era uniforms, gas masks, military set design, but also other kinds of imagery, far more jarring and "violent", drawn from advertising, consumer magazines, the trashy programs of the era's first commercial TV channels. Flyers and posters distributed by the band, looking back now, seem like objects halfway between a Situationist exercise in style and the counter-information of a Red Brigades cell: a stunt like the Nazi soldier marching in parade with an Armani eagle would be the envy of any skilled ad man. They even produced genuine nihilistic commercials: unforgettable is the détournement of a famous awareness campaign of the time, in which a grotesque anti-drug slogan is superimposed over the harrowing images of the aftermath of the Bologna train station bombing. Deliberately crude and vulgar, their show is a mocking response to the paramilitary posturing of the new European industrial scene. You can't look away in their presence; everyone is forced to reckon with the darkest recesses both of their own conscience and of the society they belong to: "We are the fascists, absolute evil. And we will judge you, the good people."

Chapter 3: heavy artillery (1991-1995)

All too predictably, the reception Disciplinatha receive is a solid wall of ostracism, sometimes violent: distributors prefer to look the other way, magazines refuse to review them, and in the few venues where they manage to play (always after endless assembly-style meetings in which they're required to spell out, down to the last detail, "whose side they're on") they risk getting beaten up by both the right and the left; on one occasion, in order to "protect" the band from their furious detractors, the stage is surrounded by a cordon of riot police, inadvertently creating a scene that matches, in tragicomic surrealism, the group's own most apocalyptic stunts. Unable to digest a product so far outside the norm, the System prefers to let it die of neglect, sealing it off in near-total isolation.

The members begin to lose motivation, Attack Punk drops them, bassist Marco Maiani packs his bags. The band is one step from falling apart, but right at that moment help arrives in the form of I Dischi del Mulo, the label that Ferretti and Zamboni (by then heading up the second evolutionary stage of Cccp, namely Csi) have just founded to promote new voices of the Emilian rock scene. The "bad boys" (now boasting a new bassist, Roberta Vicinelli) thus come under the protective wing of the most prestigious patrons they could hope for: the price to pay is a normalization of their sound and a toning-down of their live shows, but the real possibility on offer is finally opening up to a wider audience.

The first act of the new alliance is a pink 12" titled Crisis of Values, released in 1991 and containing two tracks: the title track (which samples the voice of Pope John Paul II) and the B-side "Nazioni". The work, a sort of small “geopolitical concept” à-la Laibach, reflects the profound transformations that shook the Western world, where the logic of the blocs had faded after the fall of the Berlin Wall, replaced by the new “global village” inaugurated by the First Gulf War. The tones are sinister and, needless to say, heavily sarcastic.

On the musical front there's a further departure from punk and a heavier reliance on industrial and electronic stylistic devices. On the back of the record, to defuse their sudden “redemption” and definitively distance themselves from accusations of neo-fascism (or, more credibly, to muddy the waters even further), there's a sour, mocking line that epitomizes the band's poisoned irony: “We're not right-wing, in fact, we're good people”.

On September 18, 1992, at the Centro per l'arte contemporanea Luigi Pecci in Prato, a joint concert took place bringing together CSI, Üstmamò and Disciplinatha, documented on the live album “Maciste Contro Tutti”, released the following year as the first programmatic manifesto of the Iddm. A short Italian tour by the three bands followed, which significantly helped consolidate Disciplinatha's status among the alternative audience of the '90s.

1994 saw the release of a new LP: while Crisis of Values had been Disciplinatha's response to the new continental order, A New World presents itself as an uneasy meditation on the new face of Italy, just entering the Second Republic. The first pressings of the record featured a striking cover created by artist Diego Cuoghi, unfortunately absent from later editions because it was based on an unauthorized reworking of a Jehovah's Witnesses flyer (perhaps the last category the band had yet to piss off...).

It's a deeply pessimistic record, with the title track placing little faith either in the excesses of Tangentopoli (“Giudici irreprensibili, carabinieri liberi”) or in the new unscrupulous Berlusconi-era political class (“Politici colpevoli, imprenditori e tecnici”), identified as the architects of the “new world” we're heading toward.

There's also a corrosive generational critique against rampant conformity (“Sbagliato”, “Ultima fatica”), completing a none-too-reassuring picture of the human quality of their contemporaries. The sound grows even colder and more dystopian, embracing a muscular Ebm reminiscent of DAF and Front 242, but also certain more languid Oriental-tinged atmospheres (“East & Side”, “Lune Taglienti”, “Lontano Scintillante”), likely inspired by their close ties with Csi.

The ace up their sleeve is the spot-on cover of “Up Patriots To Arms” which, helped also by an effective music video, becomes a hit on television and serves as the key to reaching audiences that would have been unimaginable just a few years earlier. The true gem, however, is “Vi ricordate quel 18 aprile”, a hallucinatory reinterpretation of an anti-fascist ballad by Giovanna Daffini, in which the band reaffirms its unsettling power of suggestion on the ever-controversial theme of memory. With this song, the following year, the group took part in the compilation released by Consorzio Produttori Indipendenti titled “Materiale Resistente”, once again catching everyone off guard.

1995 also saw the release of the anthology A-Raccolta, which, alongside reissuing We've waited patiently for 40 years. Enough is enough! (which had in the meantime become impossible to find) and Crisis of Values, contains the ferocious unreleased track “Tu meriti il posto che occupi” along with a handful of live cuts.

Chapter 4: unconditional surrender (1996-1997)

Within a few years, Disciplinatha had gone from feared terrorists with a price on their heads to small rock stars more or less universally embraced. A dream come true for any other band, but Disciplinatha are not a band like any other: for them, music had always been the armed vanguard of an idea, the most immediate extension of a project bigger than themselves, a discourse that precedes and justifies any concrete act. Accustomed to questioning everything, including themselves, at the peak of their professional success they're forced to reckon with who they are: what does it mean to be Disciplinatha? Where do they go from here? As is typical in these situations, two camps emerge: those who want to reclaim the spirit of their early days and return to subversive, scandalous music, and those who approve of the more reassuring new direction and would gladly continue down that path. Neither faction manages to prevail, and the result is a stalemate: for a band used to seeking confrontation at all costs, it's a situation of extreme distress, one in which there's no air to breathe.

Primigenia, released in 1996, is the pained, moving offspring of that rudderless season. It's a record that distances itself so much from anything Disciplinatha had been up to that point that it makes you doubt it's the same band. It is, essentially, an apologue on the Void, one that drowns in the Void and feeds on the Void in order not to succumb. From the vivid frescoes in which everything is wound up to the breaking point, we move to a dimension where nothing is defined: the music delivers the final wipe to the abrasive sounds of their early days and veers dangerously close to American-style guitar alternative-rock, at times even brushing against the self-pitying paralysis of post-rock (truly the last thing one would have expected from a band that would rather have smashed its head against a wall than wallow in self-pity).

The lyrics, likewise, abandon proclamations altogether and become abstract, enigmatic, melancholic, with a sense of defeat and disorientation hovering over every track. It's an extremely dark, deathly record, so devoid of any vital drive that it would demoralize even the most enthusiastic of rebels. The coherence of this latest evolutionary stage is almost too obvious: with the battles spent, Disciplinatha find themselves tired revolutionaries with no cause left, disillusioned veterans licking their wounds while numbly contemplating the rubble around them, with the vaguely guilty daze of survivors. The débacle afflicting them is the twilight of an entire generation, both musically and politically: but the record doesn't even attempt to carry the weight of anything beyond its own boundless personal desolation. “Piena la bocca/ Di vuoto vuoto/ Pieno è vuoto/ E vuoto è pieno/ E urla, urla/ Di niente urla/ Tu parlami di me”, “D'Intro” emblematically stammers over a devilish rumble of distorted bass.

“Lingua Lusinga” tries to cry for help (“Immensamente sto scivolando/ Smaniosamente io sto franando”), but doesn't even find a mirror willing to listen. “Esilio” further defines the state of powerlessness (“Sai cosa me ne frega della libertà/ Anche se posso parlare non mi riesco a sentire”) but, fair enough, also gets a few things off its chest (“Non ci pago l'affitto con la verità/ Eran tutti collusi, venduti, confusi”), before taking refuge in the mystical-leaning lands of the title track. “Quanto mi ami” could have become a hit in someone else's hands, and if only for that reason it sounds as desperate as a relationship aborted before it ever blossomed. “Mi addormento” is a textbook succession of whispers and screams typical of the genre: except that the tragedy staged here feels so real it chills the blood. “A volte invece no” and “Voci” seem to tell the same story from two opposing points of view, neither of which can or wants to piece the shattered original picture back together, before both are swept away by a “New Dawn Fades” even bleaker than the original, featuring a few apocryphal lines sung in Italian and a closing coda tinged with aphasia in which to lose oneself, hoping never to be found again.

“Otto Minuti” is Disciplinatha's absolute masterpiece, a magmatic, endless track, solemn as a mass and three-dimensional as a bad trip; and it's only out of the shock of that overwhelming experience that the metaphysical blues of “Chiamala Inverno” can steal the line that closes the record, so plain and simple it breaks your heart: “Dolce come l'amore/ Piano come dormire”. To think we're talking about the same people who, less than ten years earlier, titled a record “We've waited patiently for 40 years. Enough is enough!” is something astonishing. Disciplinatha made an adult record as teenagers and a teenage record on the verge of adulthood: a prerogative of the mad and/or the brilliant. Compared with the contemporaneous “Gothic Line”, it stands as its ideal negative photographic image: where Csi flay past and present, staging a blazing trial of the victors, Disciplinatha tear their own arms apart exhaling a slender requiem for the defeated, a poem of asphyxiation as majestic as a dying star. It's their own deeply personal retreat into the private sphere, and as such it remains their most violent and necessary work: nothing is more painful and all-consuming than the weeping of a single person shut inside a dark room.

Panned by one critic in three and one fan in two, Primigenia instead deserves to stand as the ideal summation of their entire trajectory, as well as one of the deepest dives without a tank ever ventured by Italian music as a whole.

The situation, at this point, is paradoxical: while old followers read this shift as the definitive betrayal of a band now "sold out," on the other side of the barricade a new potential audience is taking shape (that of the post-grunge generation left orphaned of reference points) that would be thrilled to welcome them. As proof of this, they are even invited onto a TV show, the delirious culmination of their reflection on communication. But Disciplinatha remain warriors too proud to submit to compromises that have no place in their moral code, and when you're trapped, sacrifice remains the only viable path ("Non posso che perdere/ Ma in libertà," they sang on "Esilio"): the split, then, is at this point almost physiological, coming after a dramaturgically flawless epilogue.

And, ironically, the last track recorded by one of the most combative bands of all time is nothing other than a very sweet lullaby: "Soffia piano," included that same year on the compilation "Matrilineare."

No one has challenged every convention of Italian music with such tenacity as they did. No one deserves more than them to be remembered on the top shelves of rock historiography. And yet no one, more than them, will remain a totem for the few, as precious as all clandestine cults.

Chapter 5: heroes never die (2012-present)

For years, Disciplinatha drop off the radar. Both Dario Parisini and Cristiano Santini stay active (the former joining Valerio Zecchini in the Post Contemporary Corporation project and lending his guitar for a while to Massimo Volume, the latter founding Black Fading Records and working as a producer), but the band itself remains tucked away in the trunk of memories.

Reigniting interest, in 2008, is a curious episode that will resonate throughout the national alternative scene: Offlaga Disco Pax slip into the track "Sensibile" (from their second album "Bachelite") a decidedly polemical and venomous line, in which they condemn the choice to thank Francesca Mambro in the credits of We've waited patiently for 40 years. Enough is enough!. The dissing sparks a lively debate that, if nothing else, has the merit of stirring renewed curiosity around the band. Years later, the matter will be at the root of an equally talked-about "physical" confrontation between Max Collini and Parisini, as ambiguous and enigmatic as everything that has ever concerned Disciplinatha (the guitarist has never offered any comment on the matter).

But it's in 2012 that the smoke signals grow thicker: the band decides to indulge in a bit of self-celebration with the box set Tesori della Patria, a beautiful limited edition set containing their entire official discography, the album of unreleased material "Foiba" (which includes, among other things, the incredible collage "Lo stato delle cose"), and the precious documentary "Questa non è un'esercitazione" by Bologna-based director Alessandro Cavazza, which retraces the band's history through interviews with all its members and accomplices such as Jello Biafra, Helena Velena, Giovanni Lindo Ferretti, Massimo Zamboni, Emidio Clementi, Renato "Mercy" Carpaneto, and Manuel Agnelli. In the fall of that same year, Disciplinatha reunite for the first time with a concert at Bologna's Moonlight Festival, an occasion on which, with the exception of drummer Daniele Albertazzi, all the various members who passed through the band over the years take the stage, alongside the Coro Alpino di Monte Calisio and the Coro delle Mondine di Bentivoglio.

The question nagging at many, however, is inevitably another one: what would Disciplinatha have to say about the troubled times we're living through? Will their stentorian voice rise once again against the hypocrisies of the Bel Paese? The answer arrives, entirely unexpected, in December 2017, when Parisini, Santini and Maiani announce they've made a new, self-titled work under the name Dish-Is-Nein: the mini-album on white vinyl (an obvious nod to the format of their historic debut, whose thirtieth anniversary it celebrates), teased as in the old days by a dense web of sinister images and provocatively unveiled via an article in "Il Giornale," will come out the following month on Contempo Records. The six tracks, which render the band's vis in a sharper, more menacing form than ever, feature contributions from Renato "Mercy" Carpaneto of Ianva as co-writer of the lyrics, Skinny Puppy drummer Justin Bennett standing in for the departed Albertazzi, longtime collaborator Valeria Cevolani, and the aforementioned Coro Alpino di Monte Calisio.

And it's precisely the choir's striking evocative power that sets the tone of the first track, "La chiave della libertà," opened by a cold industrial pulse overlaid with a reinterpretation of Luigi Pigarelli's song "Compagno fucile," before Cristiano Santini's infernal crooning begins to intone its grim curse over a brooding bed of strings. It's an incipit of titanic breadth, run through with a gothic shiver reminiscent of the most solemn Coil, perfect for exalting the individual revolt of the brigand, the partisan, the anarchist — heroic figures still plausible, indeed necessary, in an age that has rendered mass uprising unthinkable. Convincing, here as throughout the album, is the work on the sound (handled by Santini himself), crisper and more defined than ever before.

A completely different mood takes over on the following "Toxin," a nervy Ministry-style gallop, in some ways close to the robotic energy that fueled A New World, instantly gripping and rightly chosen as the single. The lyrics are an anti-modern tirade that spares no one, acid-tongued words spat out not without irony, with that fine balance between directness and ambiguity that remains one of the band's trademarks. If it stirs controversy, it will have done its job. "L'ultima notte," in which the choir returns to intone the Alpine song of the same name, is instead a spectral neofolk ballad, unfurled by two overlapping/opposing voices in a game that wouldn't have displeased Douglas Pierce, whose motionless desolation is whipped by the taut, Reznor-esque crescendo of the finale. It's a proud ode to defeat by the enemy's manifest superiority, but also a despondent reflection on the stickiness of violence that breeds more violence. "Macht Frei" is an exercise in all-out provocation, so unerring it could be used for teaching purposes: a list of acronyms identifying various facets of our time are set alongside the terrifying motto of the title, a sardonic sample from a prayer by Benedict XVI pops up in the bridge, while at the close the anguished voice of a child emerges, humming the refrain of "God Save The Queen," underscoring that for the unfortunate souls of his generation there can never be "no future." Tracks like this leave you speechless, both for the courage behind them and for the skill with which they're built, eloquent testimony to Our Heroes' punk apprenticeship. Comparisons to Laibach have been a constant throughout Disciplinatha's career, but by now it might be the Slovenian outfit who should be taking lessons from them.

Introduced by a martial stomp of approaching combat boots amid electronic interference, "Eva" is, musically speaking, the album's most violent moment, with near-EBM drums and Parisini's guitar swinging precise metallic blows. Cevolani's voice adds further theatricality to a chorus that sounds like a declaration of war on the world, almost a jüngerian "walk into the woods," a sacrifice so reckless it can't afford inexperienced recruits. It's the ultimate war bulletin, desperate because the situation it describes is desperate. Closing out this apocalyptic fresco is the cinematic instrumental "Finale," mindful of the lesson of David Tibet: three and a half minutes of meditation for piano and atomic fallout that fades into a sepulchral Gregorian lament, a requiem for a humanity no Beauty can save anymore.

Disciplinatha still manage to strike fear through the sheer force of their vision, as far removed as anything could be from the flat mediocrity that too often afflicts homegrown productions. Dish-Is-Nein is a complex work, yet accessible on multiple levels, offering different layers to decode while hardly leaving anyone indifferent — fittingly, since it isn't indifferent to the present it addresses. The rage running through it might inspire a resigned nihilism, or instill fresh energy to push back against the cowardice of an era that has bowed its back before the most abject abuses. It's an album many will hate, and that too will be a healthy reaction, because certain works are bound to divide.

A shining example of artistic youthfulness and human maturity, this small-but-great record is yet another proof of how badly we still need an approach to art determined to aim high, able to invoke ambitious horizons and flirt with dangerous tools, striking chords that worn-out postmodern rhetoric can increasingly barely even touch.

As proof of renewed interest in the band, in the fall of that same year Tsunami Edizioni publishes "Tu meriti il posto che occupi – La storia dei Disciplinatha" by Giovanni Rossi, a hardback volume of over 600 pages in 399 numbered copies, available for purchase only on the publisher's website. 2019, meanwhile, brings a lavish vinyl reissue of Tesori della Patria which, besides remastering the entire discography and refreshing the artwork (by artist Simone Poletti), includes an unreleased 7" featuring the cover of "New Dawn Fades" already heard on Primigenia, conceived to mark the fortieth anniversary of Unknown Pleasures: both releases are excellent tools for retracing the unrepeatable adventure of the Bologna band, ideally sealed on June 9, 2022 by the passing of Dario Parisini.

On the following December 1st, the day the guitarist would have turned 56, his former comrades-in-arms decide to release an unreleased version of "The Man Machine" by Kraftwerk, a band Dario always loved. In the cover, accompanied by a dystopian video directed by Diego Ballatori, the majestic solemnity of the Coro di Monte Calisio replaces the impersonal chill of the vocoder, settling the score between man and machine. A different version of the track, renamed "The Metal Machine," together with a remix of "Eva" by KMFDM, appears on April 23, 2023 on a 12" with artwork by Simone Poletti, released for Record Store Day. A farewell as solemn as it is fitting for one of the most gripping sagas in Italian music.

The vertical line that led us from Disciplinatha to the unexpected six tracks of the (remarkable) self-titled Dish-Is-Nein in 2018, finds new vigor seven years later in an album with a programmatic title, Occidente (A Funeral Party) (2025). It's a bitter party, this dear West of ours, a non-place populated by far too many people convinced of the moral and material superiority of the empire they belong to.

Dario Parisini, who passed away almost three years ago, is no longer with us, but his absence today has the flavor of a visceral presence, given that Cristiano Santini has decided not to replace him in any way. This is a record without guitars. Alongside him is the welcome return of Roberta Vicinelli (already in Disciplinatha back in the 90's) and the definitive addition to the lineup of Justin Bennett, an American drummer based in Italy with a past in Skinny Puppy. The result is a sound of pure electro-industrial stock, a trait that doesn't suppress in any way the rock-iconoclast soul that has always been the beating heart of the project once known as Disciplinatha. A controversial path (and one not easily digested by some) that positions the band as the most authentic and shape-shifting Italian response to what the essential Laibach have done on Slovenian soil.

The first single, "Stato di massima allerta," is the most tangible proof of this: Cristiano Santini's voice may not be as martial as Milan Fras's, but the moods aren't so far removed from those already savored in "Eurovision." An abyss foretold, a continent falling apart, power that smiles, grants and represses with the same hand. While we go along with it all. Echoing the most famous work by Étienne de La Boétie, it's a discourse on voluntary servitude. Feelings that return in the alienation of the individual sung about in "Superfluo," a track that, through nihilism and resignation, leads us into the arms of a funeral-march epilogue, a final farewell to Dario in a society dressed in mourning ("tu invece, quanto manchi, amico mio").

Every composition is a jab, a sharp blow. "Occidente" fires point-blank at the hypocrisy and decline we're witnessing ("Occidente, il niente. Un bancario, non più un uomo, un sudario. The fight against patriarchy, cocaine, NATO"). A globalist binge that regenerates itself in paradox (the memorable electronic chill of "Asylum," complete with a nod to "Still You") and that unleashes the blackest disillusionment ("Dove il buio si muove"). Apocalyptic undertones of which we're helpless spectators: we listen in silence, in the place of our exile, where we watch with clarity as this imminent cataclysm unfolds.

This bleak picture is rounded out by the understated "Le voci del silenzio" and by a successful, deeply personal tribute to the Beatles (the lysergic controversies of "Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds"), where we again find the Coro Monte Calisio and an apathy that turns into neurosis, because drugs are never an escape, let alone a solution.

Occidente (A Funeral Party) represents a solid return for Dish-Is Nein, a worthwhile record that, if we're being nitpicky, is perhaps too tightly locked into a rather rigid compositional framework, and thus less varied than their previous work. Yet this uniformity actually falls in line with a cold message that is by now estranged from any form of struggle or hope. Indeed, we are pawns within an irreversible system ("my optimism rests on the certainty that this civilization will collapse. My pessimism on everything it will do to drag us down in its fall," wrote Guy Debord). Words that could perfectly sum up the thinking of the 2025 incarnation of Dish-Is-Nein.

Contributions by Paolo Chemnitz for Occidente (A Funeral Party)

Thanks to Helena Velena and Fabio Macellari for their valuable advice, and for everything else…

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