Vltra

And so, we came to the latest Spite Extreme Wing album. Common opinion in the Italian scene that sees the dissolution of the band, and consequently the end of Black Metal Invitta Armata as criminally precocious, but it was so. And nostalgic hearts like mine just have to accept it, proud to have had the opportunity to appreciate a genius who remained in the international shadow, but who made those who have long craved an authentic Italian black metal sound dream.

Can you imagine extreme metal played with vintage instruments? This is the typical perception that the listener has in front of Vltra, and it isn't just an empirical factor: Argento's band has in fact used an instrumentation dating back to around the end of the 60s and the beginning of the 70s, with that kind of distortion, that kind of reverb, that specific sound somewhere between professional and raw, but ladies gentlemen, they did some good epic black metal on it! Vltra represents the culmination of the musical and conceptual journey begun by Magnificat (2003), outlined in Non Dvcor, Dvco (2004), exploded in Kosmokrator: Magnificat II (2005) and now closed here in an epilogue with a grandiose, dramatic, emotional flavor such as the spiritual tension that guides the heroes on the journey towards the meaning of everything, embracing Death without fear. I have always tried to maintain a poetic and courtly language in writing reviews for the full-length Spite Extreme Wing, but I did it so that you could understand the very essence of a band that, deprived of this explanation as much as of this scent, it would seem just the umpteenth, nostalgic, right-oriented black metal project.

Vltra is the journey. Vltra is the goal. Vltra is the will to power. The punk and thrash metal influences from Non Dvcor, Dvco are back; the tragic, majestic and spiritual fury of Kosmokrator: Magnificat II are back. However, everything has evolved into a dialectical synthesis made up of the dark anger typical of black metal, dark anger that nevertheless doesn't exempt itself from evolving and letting itself be embraced by influences capable of exalting it, to the maximum terms. Just think of the presence of two covers ("IV" is a cover of "Devilock" by The Misfits with different lyrics, and "X" is a cover of "Helter Skelter" by The Beatles, sung respectively by Il Colonello, from Frangar, and Herr Morbid, from Forgotten Tomb), testifying to the experimental and at the same time completing approach applied to this LP. If possible, in this final album the epic and majestic factor is highlighted even more, similar to what one feels sailing with one's company of heroes towards the Mithraic sun, in search of that immortality denied to the flesh but granted to those who, thanks to their own enterprises, made themselves eternal in stone: there, where the last wave breaks.

Favorite tracks: II, III, V