Review: Greve – Allo Specchio

“Everyone’s looking for new series and new stars”

There are two possible scenarios when old music fellas gather together for a new musical project: the result can either be a redundant smelling stuffy litany or, as in the case of Greve, something miraculously beautiful. Musicians who played in Manimal, AntiYou and Afasia, hence not properly newbies, are able to amaze for the freshness in proposing something that, on its own, is not fresh at all: a classic EP punk HC in Italian that packs as many songs as possible on the two sides of a 7″

Six mines in 7:30 minutes of fast “panc” music with no trace of the boring metal cues that seem to be more and more common in the Italian average hardcore scene of the recent years. Bass guitar is direct and crucial, drums deliver tons of rhythmic cues (great work on the snare here by the Chef!), Guitars cleverly hide in the hum of the rhythms and suddenly emerge from the rear for that short but fundamental variation.
Vocals are almost the same throughout the six tracks and actually work perfectly: often I’ve been questioning myself whether or not monotonous vocals are the weak point of an album (which is why I am among the few ones who do not get the hyped about Discomostro) but in this case, perhaps also thanks to the beauty of the lyrics and the short duration of the album itself, this becomes a plus. In particular the rhymes and accents on the letter “A” at the end of several bars are well prepared and give that poetic feeling without “closing” it too much. In the end you just want to sing along, psyched up as you are after listing to this album.

Hellnation often offers us quality music and once again they got it right with Greve, helping them bring to release the best hardcore EP of 2019. I’ll be waiting to see if this perfect 7″ formula will work on an eventual new album or if the kids will go for something different next time.

Nick Northern