I tried playing Mater earlier today while sorting out some cables on the floor, and it kept distracting me so much that I forgot what I was doing. Which is probably appropriate because the album doesn’t really behave like it wants your attention in a normal way - it sort of leans in sideways, if that makes any sense...
The guitars don’t line up cleanly. One of them goes off somewhere - I thought it was a mistake the first time - and then the other one tries to catch it, but not successfully. Actually, "tries" is wrong; they don’t care about each other, but somehow they meet again. The whole thing feels like walking behind two people arguing, but you can’t hear their words, just the rhythm of it. (I’m probably overthinking, but whatever).
The drums jump in and out of pockets like the drummer is half a second ahead of everyone else or behind them, depending on the section. I kept expecting a steady run at some point, but no, it twitches instead - stops, changes its mind, goes off again. I like that, though. Reminds me of shows in tiny rooms where the kick drum walks away from you.
The vocals are in Italian, and I only catch pieces - witches, earth, something about offering? It could be my brain filling in gaps. Some lines land clearly, and others smear into the guitars. It’s not dramatic, which is good. Feels more like someone talking through a wall, like they’re addressing something you don’t get to see. I don’t know if that’s intentional, but it works.
The whole thing smells Roman to me - the actual Rome, with cracks in the pavement and strange cold corners in buildings that shouldn’t be cold. The riffs carry some of that weight. Probably I’m projecting. Still, if you’ve ever walked behind Termini at night, you know what I mean (I did a couple years ago): heavy air, random silence, then noise. The album has that shift.
Song structures wobble. I like that. A couple moments sound like they’re losing balance, like one of the players hit a different idea and everyone else either follows or doesn’t. I replayed a section because I thought they messed up, but now I’m not sure. Mistakes sometimes sound better anyway.
Melody appears in a sideways way. Short, bent notes that don’t linger properly. They cut out before your ear adjusts. A few of them stuck with me, but then vanished when I tried to hum them later. So maybe they weren't melodies after all, just... shapes.
The quiet parts? Heavier than the loud ones, oddly. You get these gaps where you start hearing other noises - room sounds maybe, some hiss, even something shifting in the background. It feels like the music is holding its breath and waiting for something else to break.
Calling it black metal is fine, but it doesn’t sit neatly in that drawer. There’s the pagan Rome vibe, but not in the dramatic forest-way bands' love. More lived-in. Dirt under nails rather than torches. Melodic bits that aren’t doing the "look we’re melodic" thing. Scratches left unpolished.
On the third listen, I caught a weird scraping under one of the riffs (might’ve been my speakers), and some word in the vocal line that I’m still not sure I heard right. That’s the sort of album it is - you notice something new because the songs don’t shove their intentions forward. They just exist, and you bump into details by accident.
It stuck around after it ended. Not in a chorus way - just in that "something shifted behind me" sort of way. Might have been the room. It might have been the record.
Either way, it’s good!
https://www.instagram.com/vacua_bm/
Thanks to Grand Sounds PR.
