CANAAN – Some Last Echo

vote
7.5

• Bands:
  CANAAN
• Duration: 00:65:41
• Available from: 10/01/2025
• Label:

• Eibon Records

Streaming not yet available

Mauro Berchi must be in a very fertile phase artistically, given that, just a year after “Ai Margini”, “Some Last Echo” appears. Canaan's new work stands spiritually – at least from a visual point of view – in antithesis with its predecessor: where black and white and the Italian language characterized “Ai Margini”, in “Some Last Echo” colors explode again and the English language returns.
In discussing “At the Margins,” we had postulated two or three characteristics of the Canaan that constantly return, one of which was the evident disinterest in the contemporary market. “Some Last Echo” confirms it: exactly as it might have been more than twenty years ago, the edition in our possession is a digisleeve with a double booklet packaged with high quality paper.
Musically speaking, Canaan over time have accustomed us to an artistic path which in our opinion is one of progressive subtraction. Over time, almost all the elements linked to dark metal/rock have become increasingly rarefied towards an increasingly electronic world. Their music has always been cold, but over time it has become even colder, at least spiritually.
In particular, “Ai Margini” had taken away even more, coming to create an almost skeletal musical vision. This album is positioned on coordinates closer to “Images Of A Broken Self” for the use of the voice and also fishes out arrangements from previous albums, resulting, overall, more usable than the last two works.
We therefore do not find the quasi-dark ambient of songs like “La Città Che Respira” and even in the darkest episodes Mauro's voice is a constant point of reference. In any case, the overall mood of “Some Last Echo” always remains the same, negative and pessimistic enough, conforming as usual perfectly to the artwork and imagery that is colorful but equally metallic and cold. The stories told in “Some Last Echo” are ones that Mauro Berchi has accustomed us to over time, glimpses of incommunicability, loneliness and pain.
The construction of a typical Canaan piece today is based on sparse, suffused bases, beats and loops, often loaded with an echo effect so as to seem to come from dark and undefined spaces. With the guitar itself relegated to refinement here and there, Mauro's voice comes out clearly on the instruments, sometimes placid and sometimes more powerful, especially during repeated refrains that really remain impressed, as in “Anger Tides” or “No One”.
After several listens, “Some Last Echo” is positioned perfectly in our discography, both on a spiritual and musical level, and if we want to find just one flaw in the work, perhaps sixty-five minutes of such spiritually monolithic music are not very usable, but they force the listener to a certain concentration. In this, paradoxically, we imagine Mauro's sly smile, given that this has probably always been the primary intention and always will be. Even with melodic and understandable means on paper, Canaan remains a disruptive experience. Certainly not music for everyone, but music that everyone should sometimes have to deal with. You can start from here, from “Images Of A Broken Self” or from “Il Giorno Dei Campanelli” (but also from the most remote past, you decide), the experience will still be guaranteed.