Emanuele Prandoni, the man behind Anamnesi

After writing this morning’s premiere feature for a song by From the Vastland (which I urge you to hear if you haven’t), I succumbed to a plague. No, not that plague, a plague of laziness. By the time I roused myself out of the stupor, hours had passed. To keep this post from appearing too late in the day, I did some painful cutting back of what I had planned to include. But what’s left here is very, very good.

ANAMNESI

“S’Enna e S’arca“, the second single from a new album by the Italian band Anamnesi, is a magnificent song and a multi-faceted one. Its anchor point is a combination of deep drilling riffs and high swirling ones, the combination creating a feeling of cold cruelty and fevered anguish over heavy drum thunder, slashing cymbals, and scintillating fills. The song includes bestial vocals and a variety of sharp rhythmic breaks that introduce booming and jolting sensations. The music is perpetually accented by riveting drumwork and by morphing guitar emanations that seem increasingly bleak and haunting, but with sounds that also resemble birdsong at one point.

The sharpest break comes near the middle, when the music transforms into mystical keyboard ambience before the drum and bass mount a methodical and magisterial skull-pounding assault, and those glimmering and gouging riffs return. Continue reading »