Lento

A five-piece lineup with a central trio grinding out sound in impressive fashion. The two guitars, played by Lorenzo Stecconi and Donato Loia, are positioned at either end; in the middle, the pulsing bass of an unrecognizable Emanuele Massa. Three rather atypical examples of being post-something in Rome during the 2000s. Stecconi, with his mohawk and poses worthy of the late Jeff Hanneman, is pure metal-upon-your-face. Loia "looks less like a disciple of Neurosis and more like he stepped out of The National" as we've heard people say, but not in a negative sense — if anything, he freshens up the genre's clichés a bit and breaks the monotony of total-black. Massa, on the other hand, is possessed. Simply that. We find it enormously hard to recognize, behind that sort of hypnotic, ritual dance he performs with his Rickenbacker, the static kid from five years ago. Clearly the European tours have loosened up his joints, and we can only be glad of it.

Just behind him, drummer Federico Colella seems to be the first to rejoice, following his lead with precise hits and crashing cymbals. The mid-range is covered by Paolo Tornitore's synths and keyboards (also in Lloyd Turner, alongside Loia himself); red-haired, a worthy replacement for the departed Giuseppe Caputo (third guitar up until "Icon") who shifts the band's balance toward further uncharted territory.

But how did we get to this point with Lento? When "Anxiety Despair Languish", the Roman band's third album (fifth if you count the split and the live record), came out, "somewhere between rationality and brute heaviness", our colleague Francesco Nunziata perhaps failed to fully grasp the ultimate meaning of the record itself, settling on a lukewarm verdict that, in terms of "stars", only amounted to five and a half in the end. Still, for Lento, that's essentially a success. Let us explain.

When modern music plays the experimentation card, it often creates conflicting opinions. And when experimenters confront the outside world, they always stir up scandal, spark debate, raise eyebrows, provoke resentment or plain and simple laughter.

I believe it's for this reason, and no other, that ever since their formation Lento have been labeled with sharp words that, strictly speaking, have had little (very little, practically nothing) to do with the music itself. The impossibility of decoding their sonic message with any certainty — and it's certainly not simple — has translated into forum comments about their looks, their friendships, their label changes, the idea that they seem to prefer (at least apparently) Europe over Italy. Who cares?

Now, we certainly don't want to compare Lento to John Cage, but, having seen them live countless times, we can definitely distance ourselves from all those reviews that tend to pigeonhole them into a scene (the post-hardcore one) that by now can only represent them out of convenience. Everything seems chaotic, yet nothing is left to chance. Rhythmic and harmonic patterns follow one another, giving a pleasant sense of déjà vu. But each time they're dismantled, cooked down and reassembled once again, with renewed originality. "Anxiety, Despair And Languish" starts shaping its sprawling, heavy atmosphere with a gust of artificial fog: certainly neither a comforting nor an easy incipit, but a perfectly fitting anteroom for the room that's gradually filling up.

By the time "Glorification Of The Chosen One" comes around, stretched out to four minutes, old Swans logos and new Celeste t-shirts pop up in the crowd, and both attention and emotion rise. It's just a shame that the average background of the crowd reduces it all to plain headbanging, which, seen from the side of the stage, interrupts the flow of the magma and makes everything a bit more farcical.

We agree, the wall of sound is dense, clotted and stuns exactly as it should, but reducing it all to a mere matter of "headbanging" is almost a mortal sin.

A selection of two tracks from the debut "Earthen" and four from the second album "Icon" is enough to reveal the mammoth, restless soul of Lento: a brilliant detonation of simple inputs that, put together, leave you breathless. And in the end, what escapes you is precisely the idea of all the five members' possible influences. And it's when you start to realize this small yet significant detail, in that instant, in that precise moment, that you get swept up. That's when you understand the true measure of Lento.

"A Necessary Leap" is another standout moment, three-quarters through the set, with its martial stride. The band that sent even those monoliths of humility (and originality) Ufomammut into raptures, from their early live shows, has grown from an already good level to one very close to their own personal excellence. The guitar fabric is made of constant harmonic shifts that let the sound breathe and give it the right emotional momentum, the rhythm is angular and lean, and the sense that emerges is that Lento, minute after minute, are distancing themselves from Aaron Turner and co. to play exactly what they like, exactly how they like it.

Every chord and every shift is pure personal inspiration, which makes Lento simply Lento and nothing else: an entity now entirely its own, deserving all due attention. Coming out unscathed from a live show like this is a tough but fascinating feat, and the senses are stimulated as rarely happens, and pushed to their limits. In conclusion, a damn massacre on a Roman Friday night you don't see coming, with a possessed bassist driving momentum and rhythm for the whole band. If the level stays this high, missing them would be suicide.

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