We all enjoy up-tempo and strident music from time to time but there are also times when the only thing that will satisfy is something down tuned heavy and relentless and you could not find a better band to supply that type of dynamic than Italian trio 1782. These guys, Gabriele Fancellu (drums/backing vocals); Francesco Pintore (vocals/bass) and Marco Nieddu (vocals/guitar/bass), are virtual black belts in the art of sedateness, so much so that you could easily imagine them spontaneously combusting if asked to raise their BPM's anywhere too far north of a pummelling plod. Relentless however does not equate to monotonous, 1782 may like to walk on the dark side but there are plenty of shards of light regularly shining through the bands miasma of gloominess that will cause any feelings of ennui to rapidly dissipate and no more so than on the bands latest release "Clamor Luciferi" (Heavy Psych Sounds Records)
Things begin reverent and solemn with organ heavy intro "A Merciful Suffering" (featuring Nico Sechi) but then take on a more satanic feel with its follow up "Succubus", the band settling nicely into a sedate doom groove replete with thrumming riffs and pounding percussion over which vocals are roared in bear like monotonic tones. "Demons" follows and boasts a slightly more strident tempo, not a gallop by any means but more a step up from a crawl to a heavy lumber. "Black Rites" is up next its dark reverberating riffs twinned with a mix of grizzled lead and hellish harmonized vocal interplay, it is on this track that one of those rare shards of light makes an appearance, Nieddu stepping up to the plate with a brief, but very welcome, guitar motif that is tonally at odds with the thick swampy tones surrounding it. If you thought things couldn't get any lower slower and heavier then that thought gets shattered by the almost subterranean groove of "Tummultus XIII" an instrumental that sounds like the soundtrack to an oncoming apocalypse. "River of Sins" raises the tempo once again but only by a notch and contains the albums most melodic vocal, that is if sounding like someone manically roaring from the bowels of the earth can be called melodic. The band bring a touch of psych to the altar for "Devil's Blood", only a hint but it does count as one of those shards of light we spoke of earlier. It is customary to close an album on a high but 1782 do not really do high and so with "Death Ceremony" they go as low as it is possible to go without being crushed under the weight of their own riffs, a crushingly heavy doomic tome that gnaws at the ears like an emaciated zombie with the munchies.
There is a claustrophobic element to 1782's "Clamor Lucuferi", a heaviness in its grooves and its dank cloying atmospherics that at times feels almost physical and evokes a feeling of being crushed or smothered, strangely it is this same element that also make it such an enjoyable listening experience. Check it out ....
© 2023 Frazer Jones
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