NeroArgento – Land Of Silence
NeroArgento – Land Of Silence
Rockshots Records
Release Date: 07/10/22
Running Time: 30:28
Review by Dark Juan
9/10
Rollercoasters are fucking cool, especially when you are not a corpulent 40-summat fat bastard who struggles to raise his enormous arse from his sofa in search of beer and snacks. I, Dark Juan, spent a very long time riding rollercoasters at a famous Northern theme park yesterday, and it is fair to state that today I am fucking fucked. My skeleton is protesting every movement that doesn’t involve reclining like a French girl in a painting upon a chaise-longue and being hand fed grapes by my harem (Mrs Dark Juan), who incidentally has no sympathy for me whatsoever, contenting herself with merely reminding me that I should fucking know better than to spend 10 hours on rollercoasters at my age and laughing at me as my tortured joints crack and creak. There’s no need for such behavior. No need at all. Even the teenager I wrangle at work was laughing at me because I claimed I am a silver fox and that my looks and personality were what keeps Mrs Dark Juan interested. This apparently is hilarious. I’m sure the child thinks that I just return home after work and sit motionless for three or four days and don’t do anything until the electrodes are plugged back in and I return to work, rather than having a relationship that doesn’t result from disordered and chaotic attachments. Saying that, Mrs Dark Juan’s current project (check out Brigante Textile Arts on Facebook, fans of disturbing as fuck art stuff!) is turning out to be absolutely terrifying, yet curiously groovy. As usual. One wonders just what’s wrong with her head, really…
Whilst I was babbling semi-coherently during that first paragraph, I am listening to the sixth album released from Italian one-man Industrial Metal project NeroArgento. The lack of a space in the name of the band is setting my grammar Nazi teeth on edge and it’s irritating me mightily. Anyway, he’s annoyingly good looking and even more annoyingly talented, so it’s only right that I instantly take a dislike to the impeccably attired bastard and I rip his soon to be released record a new arsehole, isn’t it?
Not today, Josephine.
What NeroArgento deliver is superior, if highly polished, Industrial Metal with a very strong Nu-Metal edge to it and it has an instant catchiness that slams the poor unsuspecting listener right in the backbrain with grooviness that draws in influences from classic EBM, Linkin Park, Coheed and Cambria, Skinny Puppy, Korn and KMFDM among many others. What NeroArgento needs to leave alone is the square wave processor, because there are at least four occasions where he uses it, and it gets irritating. Especially when I am sick to fucking death of being asked whether Drill rappers are autotuned by the teenager I wrangle when he’s faced with a tiny little bit of square wave. I wish I had never had that mini-rant at work, now. Karma is a bitch, friends…
The album opens with the latest single release, ‘The Way I Am’ and it is a surprisingly poppy opener, very highly polished and with melody for days. NeroArgento also sings in a flabbergastingly different register than I expected. With his slightly threatening bearded and heavily tattooed promo photos, I expected a gravelly, rough vocal. Instead, you get an ear-caressingly clean and high vocal (chopped and messed about with, to be sure), underpinned by pitch-bent keyboards and heavily produced guitar and drums and the kind of soaring, expansive chorus that Linkin Park exercised to their massive credit and success. Even if it’s all a bit Emo with the impassioned quality of it. Baby goth teenagers are gonna fucking lap this single up just as avidly as they did anything by Motionless In White. Things are rather more muscular on ‘You Killed Me’, with a verse that could be equal parts Marilyn Manson and Nine Inch Nails with added stabs of chiptune, a short and full-throated bridge to yet another colossal chorus and ‘The Nameless Ones’ is a paean to Industrial and Electronic Body Music kings Skinny Puppy – the tune would absolutely fit beautifully onto “Too Dark Park” or “Rabies”. Until the middle eight anyway, when there’s a bit of Heavy Metal roaring before the song returns to clanking and stabby, discordant electronics and a heavily chopped and reshaped vocal.
You know what? It pains me to say this because I was never a big fan of Nu-Metal, but this record is actually pretty fucking awesome. It sounds like a man dedicated to his craft has written and performed it. The vocals, although impassioned in that way that Emo bands characterised on their performances, actually have emotion behind them and don’t sound contrived in the way that say, Gerard Way did – that false pathos and dewy-eyed sadness that oozed out of every fucking duplicitous, money-grabbing pore on him. Especially when he was moping and mugging in front of a fucking camera, the floppy-haired shite. NeroArgento can do everything from a full-throated, furious roar to a seductive vocal that will moisten the gussets of teens to old ladies everywhere, to choruses that could either have a crowd jumping furiously or a young goff girl flinging her Spongebob Squarepants pants at him, depending on the song. Also, his use of electronics to underpin the very polished and heavily produced guitar on the record are to be commended. They are dense and complex and interesting, not just being blobs and squeaks and chirps and NeroArgento appears to know his old school EBM and Electronic Industrial as his sound easily owes as much to Ayria, Suicide Commando and Skinny Puppy as it does to Linkin Park, NIN and AFI. The intermix is intoxicating. ‘Justify Your Own Weakness’ is reminiscent of an unholy coupling between British (and criminally ignored) melders of Techno and Metal Cubanate and Rage Against The Machine. This mélange of influences is what makes NeroArgento’s music greater than the sum of its parts.
Production-wise, the album is lush as fuck. Everything is mixed with an intimate and single-focused attention to detail and so painstakingly recorded that it borders on the monomaniacal. Apart from the snare, which he’s managed to make as flaccid as a blobfish left out in the sun for a couple of days. Otherwise, everything has a shiny, high-performance, mirror polished feel that you normally get from American Industrial music, although marks are going to be deducted by the blatant cash grab that is ‘Run Away Walk Away’ which I’m fairly sure is going to be the next single from “Land Of Silence” with its chart friendly lightweight metal and chorus that is purpose designed for hordes of baby goffs to howl along to in their bedroom whilst applying eyeliner and black nail polish. The problem is the chorus is now in my fucking head and won’t be shifted for love or bastard money… which, I am forced to admit, is the mark of a good chorus. Fuck.
The Patented Dark Juan Blood Splat Rating System (Il sistema brevettato di valutazione degli schizzi di sangue di Dark Juan) awards NeroArgento 9/10 for an album that skirts the absolute knife edge between Metal, Pop and Industrial and looks fucking amazing doing it. Normally I hate this sort of extremely heavily produced music, but this album is something special.
TRACKLISTING:
01. The Way I Am
02. You Killed Me
03. The Nameless One (featuring Infernalizer)
04. From This Nightmare
05. Daybreak
06. Land Of Silence (featuring Vicio)
07. Justify Your Own Weakness
08. I Won’t Disintegrate
09. Run Away Walk Away
10. Far From Me
LINE-UP:
NeroArgento – Does fucking everything and looks devastating doing it. The absolute twat.
LINKS:
Disclaimer: This review is solely the property of Dark Juan and Ever Metal. It is strictly forbidden to copy any part of this review, unless you have the strict permission of both parties. Failure to adhere to this will be treated as plagiarism and will be reported to the relevant authorities.
