Photo Deborah Brugnera
We all have a gig of a lifetime. Being a simple sweetbread, mine was at the Fontigo beer festival (hardcore Treviso countryside) about twenty years ago. On stage, a Paul Di Anno still in excellent shape but, evidently, in financial troubles, together with the Children of the Damned. I remember it as something powerful and visceral, Di Anno (i.e., HE – the voice of “Iron Maiden” and “Killers”), even on that tiny stage, was a real beast and ranted into the microphone ten feet away from me and to a hundred other rowdy people, while we screamed the songs from the first two Iron Maiden albums as if our lives depended on it.
Seeing Maiden live, a few years earlier, in the Monza stadium had not given me the same emotions: too much detachment, too much professionalism.
Last Saturday, in another unspecified point in the Treviso countryside (getting to the Altro Quando without a navigator is like crossing the labyrinth of the King of the Gnomes), I attended a concert that seriously risked ousting that of the good soul Paul.
I have already written everything I could about Maximum Fest and Go Down Record, which organizes it. This year, I organized myself to arrive as early as possible and I'm there just for the performance of:
Phantom Paradox: pleasant group devoted to the most energetic Brit-pop with a generous dose of new wave neurosis. On stage, given their young age, they look like one of the bands playing at your high school's end-of-year concert. Passed with abundant sufficiency, but I hope that next year they aim at least for 7. RATING 6 ½
Loyal Cheaters: They play criminally early. But even in the hot sun, I'm a Molotov cocktail thrown at a petrol station while the tanker fills the depots. Their rock-punk devoted to Hellacopter is arrogant, but uncaring. If they seem unoriginal to you, it's because someone stole a DeLorean in the past to copy them. At the end of the concert, which lasted about fifty minutes, there were countless pieces of sticks that ended up on stage and in the audience. Lena attracts attention like a black hole does light. The last time I saw them they had a bass player who made me reconsider my heterosexuality, but today they replaced him with a pretty girl who plays the strings like a devil. Traditional values are safe, rock 'n' roll too. RATING 8 ½
Cyborg Zero: see the category “masked guitar-drum duo”, very popular today. No artistic presumptions or microtonal temptations, however. Just a pressing garage rock played divinely and made crazy by sparse arrangements and idiotic lyrics (I mention a title at random “Tu Tu Tutu Tu Tu”). As you dance, you wonder how the singer with the welding mask and built-in microphone manages in that heat. Robots probably don't have these problems. RATING 8.
Hobos: extreme metal share. They come on stage dressed as you imagine the tramps around the States and you're about to fall for it until the singer abandons his inhuman screams (the lyrics are in Italian, but they could easily be in any other language) and brings out an accent that couldn't be more Venetian. Their death with abundant injections of hardcore punk hits the mark and has the right shot. RATING 7
Bila: Maltese trio just signed by Go Down. Among many groups who, let's face it, don't really have originality as a strong point, they surprise with a magmatic music that digs its bed in unexpected directions, between sudden accelerations and doom slowings, melodic openings and lyrics declaimed in English and Maltese, with an appreciated anti-fascist commitment. RATING 8.
Guitar Wolf: difficult to explain to those who haven't been there. Unlike the other groups, the three samurai take it easy. They do the sound check after the Bila have finished, they get off the stage and come back after about ten minutes, they comb their gelled hair, they take up their instruments and it's delirium. I already knew them and I know that their discography is quite extensive (the Japanese are workaholic in this too), but it doesn't really make sense to refer to the songs, because Guitar Wolf basically only play rock standards that could be original songs, as well as covers distorted by a demented English pronunciation. The point is how they sound! Like Luffy having a blast at the table, to stick to the Japanese references. It's impossible to say whether they or the strings of their instruments are shaking more. Seiji shouts “roccheloll!” in about ten different ways. All this while a fabulous mosh pit breaks out under the stage and the festival's polystyrene scenography is torn to pieces. For the rest they do not miss anything: from the guitar played behind the back, to the bass held like a machine gun, up to the stage diving at serious art risk. 2051 cc for the premises. At a certain point Max from Loyal Cheaters ends up on stage with his guitar slung over his shoulder and even he seems in difficulty as he goes behind the other two and looks at Seiji with the air of someone who is about to exclaim “rabbi!”. RATING 11.
Photo Deborah Brugnera
Organ: the choice to have them play after Guitar Wolf was far-sighted, because they practice a completely different sport. An instrumental, cinematic and oppressive drone doom, ideal for cooling the spirits and accompanying dinner which is now nine o'clock. Ultimately Pluto is a nice place to rest. RATING 7.
Uzeda: there has always been something monastic in the music of the four from Catania. Faith in a unique idea of sound, with unpredictable but extremely rigorous geometries. You don't get much respect with such a difficult proposition if the absolute quality isn't evident to everyone. Their noise is not repelling, but only challenging. Their funk is abstract, but never cold. Right from the dry chords, played on the bass, of “This Heat”, which opens the concert, the audience's attention is maximum and Uzeda repays with an intense performance. Giovanna Cacciola goes on stage and suddenly stops resembling your children's mathematics teacher, to become the usual powerful and theatrical singer, who accompanies the rigorous architecture of the rhythm section, on which Agostino Tilotta's guitar paints acid colours. You had to be great to attract attention after the Guitar Wolf concert and Uzeda, unquestionably, are that. RATING 9.
Photo Roberto D'Aloia
Daniel D`Amico for SANREMO.FM
