ABIGAIL SNAIL - Rad Berms

Violence! It's feared by the law that tries to contain it through punishment, it's the enemy of the ethics and morals that rely on religions to keep consciences in check, but can violence become an artistic language? Hasn't cinema and visual art fed on violence too, even while decontextualizing it and exalting its purely aesthetic appeal? For Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Gustav Metzger or Marina Abramović violence was part of art itself, but not even music has remained immune to the ambiguous fascination of violence. Punk, noise, brutal death metal, speedcore are just some of the most extreme and violent forms of rock music, often victims of aesthetic exasperation but at times harbingers of genuine semantic revolutions, where the violent act becomes a cultural and political gesture. This impetus feeds the debut of Abigail Snail, a group formed by singer/guitarist/bassist Stef Kett and drummer Will Glaser (already known to our readers for the recent, splendid album "Music Of The Terrazoku: Ethnographic Recordings From An Imagined Future"), while the brilliant saxophonist James Allsopp (Sly And Family Drone) rounds out the lineup responsible for "Rad Berms".

There are albums that are hard to explain without falling into name-dropping references, but this isn't one of them: Abigail Snail seem more interested in becoming a benchmark for future stylistic digressions themselves. Otherwise there'd be no sense to the wild sequence of free-jazz, harmonic moments entrusted to the vocals, guitar disturbances and incessant start and restart of the sublime "Soul Berm": three minutes and forty-nine seconds that could be stretched out to absurd lengths without ever losing their identity. Rooted in tradition yet genetically experimental, the English band's album seeks spaces to violate within the raging vocal blues of "Good Grief" and, with equal violence, deconstructs the airier, more ethereal "Bages", twisting its meditative essence into insidious terror. There's even room for a song that in other hands might aspire to success, but the folk-psych of "Attach Bayonets", with its faint desert-blues traits, is listless and unwholesome enough to remain immune to streaming consumption. If you're worried you're dealing with a difficult work, you're off track: you can delight in the harmonic, melodic reverberations of the crystalline, almost pop "Stay Rad", or justify your passion for this crooked little gem by sharing with your friends the bloodless blues of "Bitchin' Chords", or the intriguing imperfections of the improvisation that provide the backdrop to "Show Breaking To Waves".

That the allure of "Rad Berms" stems from the three members' different artistic backgrounds is evident; the cohesion of its elements, however tied to improvisation and however sparse at times, is not only technically interesting but also unsettling and abrasive enough to resist the risk of creative self-indulgence. Abigail Snail's debut is one of the most regenerating releases of the year so far, one of the few records destined for diligent and frequent future replays, and these days that's no small thing.

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18/07/2026