Selvans – Saturnalia

vote
7.5

• Band:
  Selvans
• Duration: 00:38:17
• Available from: 31/01/2025
• Label:

• Avantgarde Music

Streaming not yet available

If it is true that the last full-length of the Abruzzo band dates back to seven years ago, it cannot be said that after “Faunalia” the Selvans were with their hands in hand, indeed.
“Dark Italian Art”, only half an hour of duration and with a large part of the minutage dedicated to cover, had well shown the clear evolution of the project, increasingly defraying by gender barriers and increasingly projected to reinterpret in a folk and extreme key The prog rock of the seventies, if you spend simplification.
Simplification that it is only in our words, because already from the beginnings Selvans has shown a respectable complexity and stratification of respectable, and the possible naivety and roughness are dampened – also of youth, and we would miss – imposes itself with an increasingly personal sound, evolved, nostalgic in absolute terms progressive.
In “Saturnalia” there are several noteworthy elements: first of all the definitive confirmation (or at least for now, who knows what the future reserves) of Italian as a language for the texts, with a decidedly interesting and functional metric outcome; Then, the increasingly accomplished synthesis of the folk dimension in the deeply extreme soul of their sound, finally the use of an orchestra and choir of sixty elements, with sumptuous, demanding arrangements, yet unnecessarily unnecessarily bombastic, to accompany Selvans (aka Luca Of the king), the Eternal Mastermind, but also a nucleus of four other musicians finally considered an integral part of the band.
From the sumptuous start of “Necromilieu”, you are immediately thrown into the pressing Gorgo of “My evil will get there!”, Where guitars are the masters and Selvans can put in place all its vocal power, capable of becoming the theatricality supported from a sublime orchestral carpet on “Mother of the torments”.
“Pantàfica” refers to a figure of the Abruzzo folklore: the personification of the nightmare, you want in the form of an old witch or cat, whose legend is told to us with a rhythmic and abrasive song, and the most black component continues on more ropes Smere in “The fiery goat”, a song where the intertwining between the tools stroke so much of sulfur, the prog rock.
The final “source of the devils” touches the ten minutes by organizing the souls that emerged in the previous tracks in an organic way: it is an emphatic and direct song, which with their eyes closed makes you run in the mind vivid images of rural and ancestral horrors: a melodramatic – in good sense – soundtrack. As can be understood, in short, the six traces of this album are a narrative that is difficult to disappear in individual chapters, compared to immersing yourself in a dark, magniloquent and euphoric narration, exactly as the stories told about a hearth in an old farmhouse must be.
According to the statements of the last times of Selvans, this story also represents the end of the band's journey: luckily it is an album of farewell that does not smell of sadness or self -elebration, and if, on the one hand, it certainly leaves a void in recent history Of the Italian metal, we are sure that this will not fail to be filled by other volcanic and stimulating projects of the ingenious Abruzzo musician.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lthe0eulcgo