Ottone Pesante – Scrolls Of War Review

[Album artwork: Alessandro Canu & Davide Chiussi]

When you have as much experience with the full depth of heavy metal as does the Last Rites collective, with a few of us tallying four decades of exposure and counting, you come to very much appreciate bands that underscore innovation as a prime directive. Trouble is, with that much heavy crammed into our craniums over such a long stretch of time, excavating new material that actually comes across as innovative becomes increasingly uncommon. Add the unfortunate truth that novelty doesn’t always end up working to a band’s advantage, plus the tricky component that is “taste is subjective”… suddenly your chances of hitting paydirt plummets. So, yeah, sometimes it really is best to stick to a xeroxed copy of yet another facsimile of Left Hand Path worn so heavily it might as well be called 20-Lane Left Hand Highway.

NO! As that chubby lil rascal Winston Churchill once garbled in between shovelfuls of Stilton cheese, “Without innovation, art is a corpse,” and I’m pretty certain he wasn’t talking about a totally awesome corpse that happens to be cannibalistic. Put simply, we must push forward! And pushing forward in this case means jumping into the first album in a trilogy dedicated to the history of brass music. Say huh? Here, have a slice of the promo copy to give you an idea of what we’re diving into.

Hello! How do you feel about horns? Big brass ones, not the horns your 10th grade teacher hid under her hair whilst ruining multiple weekends with required readings of Jane Eyre. If you’re familiar with projects such as Ihsahn, Sear Bliss or even Kayo Dot, just to name a few, then horns are certainly no stranger to your overall metallic intake. With Italy’s Ottone Pesante, though, horns stand out as the epicenter of seismic activity: Paolo Raineri on trumpet and Francesco Bucci on trombone, complemented by the notably wild but precise drum work of Beppe Mondini.

Precisely what kind of metal we’re about to dive into is a fair question, and not an easy answer. Remove the horns and replace them with traditional metal instruments and you’ve got… Well, to be honest, I don’t think Scrolls of War would work particularly well with just guitars, bass and drums. That’s good news for the band’s overall originality, as the trumpet and trombone hammer home their big and brassy purpose to give the songs a very bold marching authority, like some form of modern experimental grind being filtered through the streets of New Orleans. The grind aspect is somewhat loose—a sense of recklessness / frantic aggression you’d expect, but with a lot of atmosphere and a clear post- quality to much of the corners. The overall design is largely instrumental, and the band very much enjoys laying down a swinging hook early and then slowly adding more and more layers until the tension feels as if things might suddenly BURST.

There! That distinct ‘guitar effect’ that pops up around 30 seconds into “Battle of Qadesh,” following a very playful and melodic launch—that element is all over this record. No clue what sort of pedals, patches or distortion tools are necessary to accomplish such a task, but the only instruments listed are trombone, trumpet, drums and a single synth in track one (provided by none other than Napalm Death’s Shane Embury). In other words, clearly there’s some trickery afoot throughout these 47 minutes, and Ottone Pesante does a marvelous job of making it feel as if there are about six people cranking out these sounds instead of three. “Battle” also features a guest spot from Italian experimental musician / singer Lili Refrain, whose singing just after the halfway point gives the second half of the song a bit of a Menace Ruine flavor, which is lovely.

Also commendable is the manner in which Ottone Pesante mixes moods and tempos throughout Scrolls of War, with plenty of deep heaviness in songs like “Late Bronze Age Collapse” and the wonderfully strutting “Sons of Darkness Against Sons of Shit,” the latter of which sounds as if it could parade down the streets of New Orleans amidst Bacchus and / or Endymion marches prior to Fat Tuesday.

There’s doom here, too—a noisy, droning variety that paints the edges with gloom throughout songs such as “Men Kill, Children Die” and “Slaughter of the Slains.” The former cut uses the horns in a much more traditional way, giving “Men Kill” a notable film score feel, and the latter spends half its time scraaaaping its way through the speakers like a Melvins B-side before bolting through your brains as the fastest and LOUDEST sprint of the record.

Suffice to say, Ottone Pesante isn’t just good at building layers inside each song, the songs themselves are motley mantles atop a kaleidoscopic veneers until the full stack presents something that’s super rich in texture and variety. Again, I don’t exactly know what to call their brand of extreme music, or even how they do it, but that absolutely works to their advantage. Accordingly, I’d love to see how they pull this sort of thing off live, and I’d expect to see them tour with anyone from Orthodox (Spain) to Boris to Aluk Todolo to most any other band released in the US under the Southern Lord banner, which speaks to their originality even further. In short, Ottone Pesante is a little more than just a little different, and if you’re the type of heavy metal enthusiast that enjoys exploring unrestrained experimentation, you would do yourself a favor by making sure Scrolls of War pings your radar.