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Released on October 28, 2014 via Prosthetic Records
The Bologna, Italy-based band Nero Di Marte takes its name from an aggressively black pigment that permanently alters or darkens whatever other pigments it touches. Possible applications for such a pigment are wide, but always require a deliberate hand. In using nero di marte, the painter seeks to build upon what is already there on the canvas, perhaps to embolden it or to give it weight. Either way, whatever the end result, the process is one of sullying transformation.
Were we to scrape away the grimy hues of Nero Di Marte’s music, a number of familiar sounds would surface. Pick any band that has fallen within paintbrush’s reach of the progressive metal tag in the past 15 years—Meshuggah, Ulcerate, Gojira and even, dare I say, Tool—and there’s a corresponding element on Nero Di Marte’s canvas. But with Derivae, the band’s second album, Nero Di Marte has refined its palette such that the culminating vision is uniquely its own. Like fellow visionaries and past touring mates Gorguts and Origin, Nero Di Marte is a band capable of spinning past brilliance into new worlds.
It hasn’t always been like this. After forming the band in 2007, Nero Di Marte’s members started out by playing aggressive and riff-laden death metal under the name Murder Therapy. In 2012, after a handful of releases, they changed their name, rebranded their sonic identity and set to work on their first record as Nero Di Marte. The self-titled debut, which came out in 2013, saw the band moving in a decidedly more atmospheric direction. But while technically impressive, Nero Di Marte did not quite transcend regularity.
In 2014, that technicality has not suffered, but it has been reined in. The band on Derivae—still the same four guys it has always been—adheres more seriously to a fresh sound by focusing its attack and expanding its arsenal of atmospherics. Take, for example, opener ‘L’Eclisse’, which begins with the clangs of industry and ends with some kind of maelstrom. Guitar solos are out, replaced by serrated riffs that make jagged swipes at the rhythm section. Instead of palm-muted bursts, there are sustained chords that grind beneath pummeled toms. And front man Sean Worrell’s vocal delivery deftly moves within it all, more anguished than ever before. No longer does Nero Di Marte sound like a group of talented players; here, it sounds like a single, breathing unit. Though the listener’s endurance may flag, the band’s assault never falters.
Neither does the fluidity of the compositions waver. The band writes to its strengths, and one of its greatest strengths is its internal chemistry. Halfway through ‘Il Diluvio’ (‘The Flood’), the musical focus shifts around like a passed torch, from rhythm guitar, to rolling drums, to smoky vocals and back again. Just as Derivae takes its title from an Italian phrase that means “to go adrift”, so does the music work according to a drifting, sometimes cyclical formula. Melodic motifs rise and fall, prone to return at any time. At the beginning of album centerpiece ‘Simulacra’, a Neurosis-indebted guitar line gets tossed around by a growing din, like a rain-lashed skiff at sea. Six minutes and one impressive bass performance later, this same guitar line resurfaces, brutish and scorned.
Technically demanding music, no matter the genre, can easily err on the side of sterility. Rather by design or not, previous releases by Nero Di Marte and Murder Therapy sounded cramped. In contrast, Derivae, which has been in the works for three years, is so spacious and vast one almost fears death by aural drowning. Derivae is an entirely analog recording, and it is huge. These songs, governed as they are by ebbs and flows, churn all the more violently for the depth afforded them by the production.
It’s gratifying to hear a band with such technical heft pull off a work that marries exacting performances to purposeful and restrained compositions. Nero Di Marte may be working with familiar shades, but on Derivae it pushes them to extremes that only master-class musicians can achieve.
