GOODBYE, KINGS – Vento

Argonauta 2016

GOODBYE, KINGS - Vento

GOODBYE, KINGS –
Vento

Post-rock poets out of Lombardy praise the wind and find a funereal triumph.

Classical piano in a metal setting has, rather often than not, a pretentious presence, but this Milano ensemble weave it into heavy chords in a very special way. If 2014’s “Au Cabaret Vert” evoked post-impressionistic imagery, there’s an art deco air to their debut’s follow-up which, catching the wind’s literary concept, is chilly yet engulfing. So bleak as to draw a dirge-like drag even without a howling backdrop, the epics on “Ventro” unhurriedly paint urban claustrophobia and steppes-wide freedom with plateau-moving riffs that stomp over the anxious serenity of “How Do Dandelions Die” and the delicate keyboard patterns behind “Blue Norther” – sparse and leaving the listener out in limbo suspense.

Acoustic textures may make “The Tri-State Tornado” understatedly cinematic and “If Winter Comes…” immensely riveting in its translucent ebb and flow, although the battle of all the elements come together most vividly in “Fujin Vs. Raijin” whose sheets of guitar wail and splashes of ivories are barraged with percussion until the storm gives way to an increasingly intense calm and then to a new rage. The elegiac “Shurhùq” betrays the band’s jazz bent, but it’s the apocalyptic swell of “12 Horses” that reveals their symphonic intent and prog perspective, while “The Bird Whose Wings Made The Wind” is unfurling into a series of disparate pictures which create a black-and-white kaleidoscopic, glockenspiel-sprinkled experience.

It’s as enchanting and menacing as only the wind may be – static yet utterly moving.

*****

April 3, 2017

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