Review: Egestas – Oltre Le Rovine

Egestas, a long journey beyond the ruins

Who said that you need a destination to start a journey?
Sometimes the urgency to set off is stronger than the lack of prospects, sometimes the necessity to ask questions overcomes the lack of answers.
Those who hesitate are lost, but those who never started walking were doomed from the beginning.
In a voyage among the darkest faces of human conscience and nature, Egestas narrate a mankind in ruins, a fierce, gloomy, chaotic reality.
”We are many billions too many asking for Heaven on earth, and Hell is what we make inevitable”, says the voice in the opening words (quoting the French writer Albert Caraco).
But the band also tries to find an alternative, an escape, a road that leads us beyond the ruins of this shattered world.
Wisely mixing the violent and furious sound of death/black metal and hardcore with the thin atmospheres of post-hardcore, the five songs of the record swing between solemn melodies, with a sacred charm, and fast and rabid drums, interspersed by long and slow instrumental  narrative parts.
Surely, it is not an easy record to understand, it’s got numerous facets that will take several listenings to be fully caught, but it’s also an incredible work of sounds, words and noises, masterfully combined and stratified with one another.
A long, devious, painful voyage, but in the end you start to catch that glimpse of optimism that’s vital to go further.