Review Summary: The Earth is a dead world
To Lose La Track is an Italian independent label that has experienced a modest golden age some five years ago, releasing records like the
Neurosis-influenced post hardcore odyssey 'Il Sopravvissuto' by
Marnero, as well as some well-appreciated albums by British bands like
Crash of Rhinos (‘Knots’) and
Delta Sleep (‘Management’). The label primarily focuses on emo, post hardcore and some math rock, but many of their bands like to embed less familiar shades in their music.
‘La mano sinistra’ (‘The Left Hand’) is part of this wave. Chambers is a band from Pisa, Tuscany, arisen from the ashes of another band called
Violent Breakfast, and they play a breed of post hardcore that has its roots in the American underground nineties, the ones that hold
Drive Like Jehu as their prophets. They are named after the Nebraska senator Ernie Chambers, who in 2007 decided to file a lawsuit against God, whom he held accountable for having let humanity succumb to terror and fear through the distribution of the Bible. The album is allegedly a concept album, loosely based on the idea of a conflict between man and nature, but the song order does not follow a story, so much so that the tracklist on the vinyl version is different for the sake of length balance. The first song, ‘Chiuso per fiere’, starts off as a pretty straightforward post hardcore song, but it does a good job at showing what the band’s strong point is: dynamics. After one minute or so of unusually crystal-clear and well recorded fury, the landscape drastically changes in favor of a more melodic and quiet section, led by a slightly overdriven guitar.
So yeah, 90s post hardcore, great, but wasn’t ‘Relationship of Command’ the long-needed dot to that sentence¿ Oh, dynamics, ok, so… It’s cool, I guess¿ Dynamics are great and make an album interesting, but it’s not really something totally unheard of, even for this genre, so what does exactly make this record so special¿ Starting from the second song onwards, this album takes its time to answer the question. Clocking at 40 minutes, the average song length is little less than six minutes, enough time to stuff the songs with some exquisite psychedelia, unique chord progressions and prog-esque song structures. The songs flow with an unmatched naturalness, but it’s hard to tell what’s about to happen next, whether it’s some alien choirs, a blast beat, or maybe even some odd time signatures. This atmosphere is backed by the lyrics, impregnated with dark psychedelia and an overall sense of helplessness toward nature, spread throughout the record (‘even pyromaniacs follow weather reports, even pyromaniacs depend on the sun and the wind’, taken from their official translation for the song ‘Musica del demanio’) . It’s not a concept album a la ‘Zen Arcade’, it doesn’t tell events, nor does it have characters, but the themes of the songs are a bleak cherry on top of a bleak cake.
Chambers disbanded this year, and we will never have the chance to see them live, but they left behind an artistic testament that might as well be Yank Crime’s forgotten Italian cousin.
