Chrome

Three years after their last Italian raid, Chrome return to the same Freakout that hosted them on their previous tour, but above all to the city where, back in the distant 1981, they played their very first concert ever. At the time, despite already having five albums behind them, they were more of a studio project than a real band, and that Bologna show effectively marked their live debut. Or so the legend goes, at least… Legends aside, it's a pleasure to find them still as murky, dissolute and uncompromising as ever. Granted, this isn't the same lineup that left the small carbonari cell that booked them open-mouthed on that July 20th (founder Damon Edge passed away in 1995, after all), but the evening I'm about to recount will confirm that their spirit is still tuned to those disturbed frequencies. Frequencies that sound more like malfunctioning machinery and the wails of a dying android than human compositions, with Helios Creed's guitar alone guaranteeing a still-decomposed link to rock classicism.

The cyberpunk imagery, the sci-fi references and the collection of blurry photos we've grown fond of are all integral parts of a cult that is not merely musical, one that neither mixed fortunes, nor countless lineup changes, nor Edge's death have managed to halt. In a sense, Chrome have been a deviant encyclopedia of everything antagonistic California has produced, incurable freaks who, rather than invoking utopias, lay out visions of an apocalypse already underway amid general indifference.

The show will be the quintessence of everything one might expect from them: music that is on one hand obsessive and robotic, and on the other fiercely anarchic, capable of grafting the stylistic tics of late psychedelia onto a frigid new wave decadence. The first to appear on stage is the drummer who, on the very day the newly elected US president is sworn in, sports a knowing "Fuck Trump" t-shirt — perhaps to exorcise his undeniable hair-based resemblance to the fiery billionaire? Next come the colorful keyboardist (a sort of junkie Leon Russell, complete with headwear and sunglasses), a bassist who could be under the influence of just about any substance, and a second guitarist whose legal adulthood one might reasonably doubt. Finally, out comes the legendary Helios, a worn-out Burroughs figure with long hair and an already weary look.

An explosive opening with a medley of the first three tracks from "Half Machine Lip Moves", widely regarded as their masterpiece: "T.V. As Eyes", a hysterical little song that dissolves its punk drive into a lysergic coda, followed in short order by the horror-movie dance of "Zombie Warfare" and the massive hard-garage of "March Of The Chrome Police". The sounds are confused, acidic, unpleasant.

With "Danger Zone" and "In A Dream" the rhythms turn hypnotic, the amphetamine rush kicks in and it genuinely feels like taking off, only to crash disastrously into the booming proto-stoner riff of "3th From The Sun". The lengthy "Armageddon" lives up to its title's promise, unleashing, for almost ten minutes, literally the end of the world — a tormenting, slow-cooked nightmare worthy of the most merciless Killing Joke.

The rest of the setlist, from the intergalactic charge of "Eyes On Mars" to the funereal Iggy Pop-style crooning of "Firebomb", by way of the radioactive detonations of "Nephilins", carries on undeterred with our heroes' deafening mission.

After a very brief pause there's still time for the fractured, transhuman fantasy of "New Age" and a grand finale with "Chromosome Damage", which in the diseased universe of Chrome comes as close as anything can to the concept of a song.

In an atmosphere that's by now delirious, with the musicians slipping away and some strangers clumsily grabbing the microphones, I manage to snatch an abandoned setlist from the side of the stage. Outside the venue I find Helios signing autographs along with the rest of the band (a pretty laid-back bunch, it must be said), and I take the chance to get him to scribble on the aforementioned scrap of paper.

My eardrums are shattered, and the only sentence able to cross my mind is "what on earth did I just witness?!": perfect, I'd say. The venue's small size and less-than-ideal acoustics turned out to be evocative conduits of meaning: at times it really felt like being crammed into some filthy, disreputable dive on the Californian outskirts. In short, you couldn't have asked for better.

Heading back home, I notice a chaotic construction site looming in front of the Freakout, with pipes and sheet metal strewn everywhere: could there possibly be a better backdrop for such relentlessly steely, industrial music?

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