Note: Fuoco Fatuo was the moniker for Eversin until 2008; this is a Prog / Thrash / Heavy / Power / Epic Metal act from Sicily. This review, however, deals with the young act from Lombardy with the very same name, and it has nothing to do with the Sicilian band (and I praise my personal gods and goddesses for that – salve and slava and stuff…!).
This Lombardian Fuoco Fatuo (for me, without any doubt, the most interesting one out of these two) released two EP’s and a split before (and a compilation, if I am not mistaken, that compiled this material), and they did lots of live performances (with acts like Evoken, EyeHateGod, Grave Miasma, Necros Christos, Iskra, Abysmal Grief a.m.o.). Now they bring out their first full length studio album with the ingenious title The Viper Slithers In The Ashes Of What Remains.
This album consists of five tracks that last in between six and thirteen minutes, with a total length of more than fifty minutes. These compositions belong to the kind of Doom-laden Extreme Metal that combines eerie and morbid atmospheres with a suffocative sense of nihilism and misanthropy, leaving no room for mercy, sweetness or inner rest. It isn’t quite Doom-Death, it isn’t quite Funeral Doom what you might expect; it’s both of them, yet once again none. Indeed, this is an act from Italy, and you might know that this means an approach that is way beyond the ‘average’ level.
Let’s start with opening track Ancestral Devouring Anxiety, for example. It’s a mélange of the stuff we like to enjoy from Finland (from Unholy to Woods Of Belial, and almost everything in between), mixed with elements from the UK-based Old School (Winter and My Dying Bride’s earliest efforts might come to mind), spiced with the doomier things done by Impending Doom, or the nastiest slooooow-tuned passages by old Asphyx… No, it does not cover the essence, but to give you an impression, this might do… Also very old Samael, Phlebotomized (not the grinding pieces, nor the symphonic ones, evidently), Esoteric, Necros Christos, legendary Thergothon or this kind of beautiful ugliness, pierced with that uncomfortable deadly ugliness provided by the likes of Incantation, Disembowelment, Grave Miasma, Diocletian, Corrupted, Coffins or Evoken, softly mixed with elements from Nihilist, Abscess, Hellhammer, Necro Schizma or Torchure…
Forget the initial blackened elements from the past, or the blasted Sludge-assaults once elaborated in another past, and open your sick / sickening / sickened mind to enjoy this sonic definition of despair and misanthropy…