Teatro Satanico

On the second day of every new year, even in Massafra (TA), as in the rest of Puglia, the air still hangs thick with the sluggish, food-and-wine-soaked torpor of a post-holiday-rave hangover, the inescapable tradition of "bank holiday" excess.

The streets of the charming old town of the "Tebaide d'Italy" are deserted from late afternoon onward: an unreal silence provides the backdrop to the questionable jokes of yours truly and his companions.

At 11:15 pm, the magnetic Devis Granziera takes the stage at the New Magazine Pub, flanked by his now-established partner-in-music(k), Roberto "Kalamun" Pasini, and the impeccable Mauro Martinuz on the mixer.

The post-industrial, fiercely iconoclastic music of Teatro Satanico is a rocket fired through the window overlooking the battlefield of your city in celebration, right as you're toasting to the longed-for glories the new year will never, ever bring you.

The esoteric ceremony opens with the convulsive proto-EBM sounds of "Ilse Koch" and "Ulrike Meinhof", a prelude entirely devoted to the 7" "Gold In Blei", which in 2011 sealed Granziera's shift toward electronics following Alberto Maria Kundalini's departure, a direction further confirmed by the subsequent "Fatwa".

And it's precisely the most recent explorations that make up the bulk of the setlist: the murky textures and invective-laden lyrics of "Allah Kebab", the occult mantra "There's Creepy Crowley Crawling In My Mind", the caustic beat of "Adrian Andrew Woodhouse" (more effective than anything dreamed up by even the most inspired Reznor) and the cosmic crossing of "Sex Magick Rockets Babalon", led by a Devis transformed into an epileptic shaman, all chase one another, carving out an abyss that unsettles the minds and stomachs of the faithful and the newcomers alike.

"Baby Babalon" arrives energetic and penetrating to seduce the crowd, aided by the synthetic tones pouring from the electric clarinet of a Kalamun who is - only seemingly - immovable.

The alchemical "La visione e la voce" and the dilated noise of "L.H.P. (Turno to Spare)" (taken from "Black Magick Block", 2008) give us a histrionic Devis, given over to a physicality that grows ever more spasmodic and hypnotic; "Der Tod In Venedig", born out of a visit to the Isola di San Michele in the Venetian lagoon, known as "the Island of the Dead" because of its monumental cemetery, introduces one of the most intense and representative moments of the whole show: the performance of "Mann Frau Gott", a German-language adaptation of the apocalyptic "Uomo Donna Dio", from "Teatro Satanico/Muzakiller" (2006). Here Devis gives his best: his spoken delivery rings out as menacing as a sorcerer preparing to exterminate all of humanity, commissioned by a god who is anything but merciful. The song's martial rhythm underscores the sentence-like weight of the lyrics, while Kalamun's loop of visual jolts fuels its theatricality.

"Fatwa" closes the infernal circle with its provocations: "When religion will come, you shall believe! When religion will call, you shall believe!".

The final stretch of the show opens with "Disco Cianciulli", the prelude to the 2011 mini-album of the same name, dedicated to the notorious "soap-maker of Correggio", steeped in Italo-disco atmospheres and delivered by a Kalamun in Ferretti-esque guise, finally letting loose his exuberance, the ideal stage counterpart to his otherwise unassuming presence.

The set continues with the unreleased "Sonido de Indipendencia" and closes with the devastating power-electronics of "Confesso Tutto!", performed in a deranged version in which Pasini, in the cruel catharsis of the lines "Giudice Cambiani, ho ucciso una bambina e l'ho data in pasto ai cani!", draws in the crowd, urging them one by one to confess the unconfessable.

Hard to shake off this close encounter with the occult.

Photo contributions by Cosimo Mungheri and Roberto De Giorgio

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