Il Teatro Degli Orrori - Cold-Blooded Rock Fury

Il Teatro degli Orrori is one of the leading forces in the new Italian alternative-rock scene that emerged at the end of the Noughties. It's essentially a kind of supergroup, featuring the histrionic leader, singer and frontman Pierpaolo Capovilla and the multi-talented Giulio Ragno Favero (bassist and one of the most sought-after producers on the Italian rock scene) - two members of One Dimensional Man, the stunning and influential noise-blues act that has been active since the mid-90s. Rounding out the line-up are guitarist Gionata Mirai (Super Elastic Bubble Plastic) and drummer Francesco Valente.

What most strikes and disorients listeners on first hearing Dell'Impero delle tenebre (2007), the Venetian band's debut album, is lead singer Capovilla's "diabolical" use of the Italian language, set within a noise-driven, acidic context. The wall of sound the band conjures up on tracks like "Carrarmatorock!", "L'impero delle tenebre", "Vita mia" and "Il turbamento della gelosia" is exceptional, thanks above all to the overwhelming impact of Mirai and Favero's guitars. But the album's most remarkable and experimental trait is precisely its rejection of English (the language favoured by One Dimensional Man, and the natural choice for this kind of sound) in favour of an attempt to marry that sound with an almost singer-songwriter-like Italian expressiveness. With cynical bitterness and total disillusionment, it touches on themes such as the loss of identity and the sense of life's futility ("L'impero delle tenebre"), but also a fierce search for hope ("Vita Mia"), the hypocrisy of war ("Carrarmatorock"), suicide ("La canzone di Tom"), while the tone turns elegiac and tender on "Lezione di musica" and "Compagna Teresa", with the odd touch of naivety scattered here and there. Capovilla thus proves capable of real versatility, though his vocal mood is generally sulphurous and detached, repeatedly evoking the cynical, declamatory tones of Carmelo Bene.

The album's creative peak is perhaps to be found in the epic closer "Maria Maddalena", entirely built around contentious religious themes, where the contributions of Nicola Manzan's violin and Angelo Maria Santisi's cello prove essential in dramatizing eight minutes that, on their own, lend boundless dignity to a work that is decidedly "unique", for better or worse, within the current Italian indie landscape.

The broad and nearly unanimous praise from critics (and audiences) for their debut made Il Teatro degli Orrori's second album one of the most eagerly awaited releases on the Italian scene.

A sangue freddo (2009) preserves the originality of the band's approach, especially on the lyrical side, with an excellent use of the Italian language within musical structures that might seem better suited to English, but the album appears to veer towards a stylistic choice that smooths out the rough edges, setting aside the mad noise fury in favor of a more considered (though at times no less angry) rock intensity, occasionally indulging in melodic exploration and nods to classic Italian singer-songwriter tradition.

The opening is disorienting: preceded by a long electronic hiss, like a flat ECG line, "Io ti aspetto" is a tale of waiting and abandonment, slow and resigned, with strings and piano suspending time, making it feel as long and empty as only the wait for a vain hope can be.

There's no time to dwell on Capovilla's unusual romanticism before being hit by the grunge-metal wall of sound of "Due", a gripping throwback to the sonic world of the debut, much like the following title track, a hymn to Nigerian poet-activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, and "Mai dire mai", a blend of hard rock, pop melody and spoken word.

The band of ex-One Dimensional Man members is evolving, though, and the results are often excellent: take "Direzioni diverse", a ballad that beautifully balances electronic backing, strings and powerful guitars, the poetic-theatrical intensity of "Majakovskij" (a reworking of "All'amato me stesso"), or the slow, stretched-out flow of the final ten minutes of "Die Zeit", somewhere between Massimo Volume and Csi.

The evolutionary process has its stumbles (see "È colpa mia" and "La vita è breve"), but they're redeemed through familiar means, turning, for instance, the "Padre nostro" into a furious outburst, or diving into a mad, martial rock romp with a wild Capovilla channeling his inner Sergeant Hartman ("Alt!").

Il Teatro degli Orrori's stylistic choices might lead many to talk of a "softening" aimed at winning over a wider audience, but A sangue freddo isn't growth achieved at the cost of identity — rather, it's a gradual progression that keeps its roots firmly intact. Capovilla and Favero's band faced the dreaded sophomore test by toning things down and taking risks, paying homage to singer-songwriters like De Gregori and Celentano (and, tonally, even Battiato and Ciampi) without ever losing the fire that burned through their debut, crafting gripping tracks with the same outstanding attention to lyrics and delivery.

An album of love, detachment and protest, a mix of rage and harmony that confirms Il Teatro degli Orrori as the most interesting and compelling force on today's Italian alternative-rock scene.

Huge expectations, then, preceded their third effort, Il mondo nuovo (2012). But the album doesn't hold up against its predecessors, either lyrically or compositionally.

Il mondo nuovo is conceived as a concept album about immigration, and above all it carries the desire for an artistic shift towards softer, less jagged, and more commercially viable territory.

The opening is fairly consistent with the sound of the earlier albums ("Rivendico", "Non vedo l'ora"), but the single "Io cerco te" already reveals a weakness absent from the tight sound of the previous records; "Skopje" starts to show the first truly substantial differences — a different kind of melodic exploration, here in the form of Eastern-tinged details, and Capovilla's imposing presence, which at times seems to want to take up too much space, sometimes through blatant talking à-la Gaber, other times through a vocal structure that stands out too sharply from the musical backdrop, leaving, in many instances, a sense of disjointedness and incompleteness between the parts.

Delving deeper into the album, the sense of change becomes ever more apparent: the African rhythms woven into "Gli Stati Uniti d'Africa", Caparezza's rap feature on "Cuore d'oceano", the acoustic elegy of "Ion", the soft-rock melodies of "Monica" and "Pablo" — all of them reveal the intent to embrace a shift that, at least partially, moves away from the noise wall used until then in favor of lighter solutions, allowing for a clearer delivery of Capovilla's lyrics.

The problem with all this is that the band doesn't seem ready for this change; while some tracks work well, like "Adrian", compelling in its slow, sinister build towards a final burst of rage, or the dissonant tempo shifts of "Doris", one can't help noticing that Capovilla and co. are at their best when moving through territory they've already explored.

Perhaps, given enough time to work on it, and considering the band's musical stature and the potential they've already shown in the past, the future may well vindicate this change of direction — but as things stand now, it must be said with some regret that their entry into this "new world" amounts to something of a misstep.

This album nonetheless earned them a slot at the 2012 edition of the Primo Maggio concert in Rome. Meanwhile, frontman Capovilla has been exploring his poetic and civically engaged side further, giving readings of Majakovskij and Pasolini, some of which have even been released as audiobooks, and even collaborating with mainstream artists like Piotta and Marina Rei.

His first solo album, Obtorto Collo (2014), thus marks the culmination of this rise through the alternative scene and, eventually, the national one. Essentially a concept record of love dedications and personal elegies, the album nonetheless suffers from a substantial lack of genuine interpretation and writing, repeatedly falling back into the vice of referential posturing, and only in a few cases truly managing to delve into the urban inferno ("Invitami", "Obtorto Collo" and above all the unreleased track cut from the final version, "Sogno a colori"). His eclecticism, ranging between learned references and pop subgenres, is in no way justified by its underlying monotony.

The fourth, self-titled Il Teatro Degli Orrori (2015) confirms its predecessor's tendency to dwell on redundancies and ramblings. Aside from the keyboards of new recruit Kole Laca, the new brainless panzers are, as usual, gratuitous din propping up Capovilla's theatrics.

The only real musical constructs belong solely to "Bellissima" and "Genova", but they're counterbalanced by the embarrassment of the danceable rhythm of "Una giornata al sole". The surgical arrangements and gleaming production serve only to amplify the heavy-handed ideology, a rhetoric built on well-worn platitudes and smug tirades about the age of crisis.

It's a Pierpaolo Capovilla in great form who presents himself with Cattivi Maestri, a welcome return following the official end of his artistic partnership with Teatro degli Orrori in June 2020.

The 2014 solo album Obtorto Collo and the revival of the excellent noise-rock project One Dimensional Man in 2018 had kept alive every direction already explored by the versatile singer-songwriter, born in Varese but a Venetian by adoption.

The work plan of Pierpaolo Capovilla e i Cattivi Maestri, a lineup completed by Egle Sommacal (Massimo Volume), Fabrizio Baioni (LEDA) and Federico Aggio (Lucertulas), stems from Capovilla's desire to develop the substantial body of material he conceived over many years of reflection.

Capovilla's lyrics, as sharp, raw and at times abusive as ever, brimming with emotion yet always built with his usual linguistic care and delivered in a thunderous style, combine with daring, booming arrangements that don't allow a single second to catch one's breath.

A thick, at times impenetrable wall, erected from whip-crack guitar lashes and a simply overwhelming bass/drum rhythm section, proves to be the perfect habitat for tackling subjects such as existential collapse ("Anita"), hostility in all its facets ("Minute Girl" and "la guerra del Golfo"), the sorrows of confinement ("Dieci anni"), or the sheer indifference eating away at the community, here with a focus on racial tensions ("Morte ai poveri").

The Caravaggesque cover image perfectly captures the meaning the ensemble wanted to instill in this first, intense work, one that oozes anger, turmoil and protest, yet tries to find in sensitivity and love the tool to stay united even amid the worst adversities that Capovilla isn't afraid to voice openly — precisely those that our ears always struggle to recognize.

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