I must admit I got not even the slightest idea what Ignazio Cuga and his two fellows are throwing at me lyric-wise on the self-titled debut record by Kre^U but I must admit that this is some of the catchiest Post-Punk meets Atmospheric Black Metal stuff I have heard since Givre’s amazingDestin Messianique!

Okay, I might have an idea thanks to the promo texts – the record is Ignazio’s version of praising those who fought for the independence of his home Sardinia against the occupation by the Savoyards in the 18th century. He praises every outlaw and patriot who did not want to go along with the foreign rule which had been handed down from the Austrians to the Savoyards – he even goes so far as to claim to be one their heirs, which might of course be true but is likely more of a metaphor as Sardinia is still occupied – this time by the Italian authorities. But for Ignazio, Barbagia (another name for Sardinia) is something different than Italy and he shows that be using old Sardinian languages for the lyrics of Kre^u, here is a parallel to the Corsican Folk-singers of I Muvrini, who also sing in their native tongue and use their popularity to support many projects on the island. Hopefully Kre^u gains enough such “fame” in order to make good use of it – the trio surely represents their home and culture thoroughly; they also wear traditional Sardinian clothes on the band photos.

Coming to the music – here it becomes clear in the flashest of flashes that Cuga and his fellows know how to build a dense, highly effective soundscape with the help of samples from movies which again hold a lot of elements like church bells or very moody monologues. The album opens with such a monologue at the beginning of ”Dae Una Losa Imentigada”, taken from the movie La Destinazione from 2003. A second extract from that movie is used during the fifth track ”Ebbia Su Sambene”. Whether the crackling at the end of the first sample during the opening track has been added by the band is unclear but it has a clear intention – it’s the crackling that you can hear on very old vinyls and it directly transports you back to times long gone. The rest of the track is like a warning and is based on singular guitar motifs and a second very high-pitched tremolo line (somewhat reminding of a ukulele or similar smaller guitar-like instrument). Beneath these two lines the noisy static comes back and the warning vocals send shivers up the spine even though we don’t understand a word. Although most of the lyrics are unintelligible to me, it sounds like a hissing of men who have a cause and whose cause has not been achieved yet. The way that the r is being rolled here reminds me of a bandit spellbinding his future victim and putting a curse on him – as if saying “you better leave my land, my country, my home right now”. The moody choir passages at the end do not in any way hoodwink me here. The following will not be beautiful like the Sardinian beaches but dark like the hinterland with its hidden hills and valleys.

The record from here spells every kind of darkness between Bauhaus and Bathory thus creating a kind of Blackened Dark Metal with truckloads of remarkable good riffs, gigantic grooves and a diverse lexicon of darkness. The six songs and 42 minutes are really good and keep up with the best of the Atmospheric Blackgaze genre – you get the thunderous second track ”Notturnu” (okay that probably means “night”) and dark it is; one also gets the powerful group vocals on ”Ebbia su Sambene” which are sometimes close to Pagan Metal but you also hear lamenting passages during ”A Sos Antigos” when the vocals drone right into the heart of the listener and leave their mark there. It sounds like a mixture of the reading of the gospel and an exorcism at the same time.

One might argue that many of these structures are already common Black Metal and Dark Metal staples but the way that the trio builds their songs and gives each passage enough room to flourish is remarkable and should not be missed by the ones who like their Post-Black Metal or Blackgaze a little more Post-Punkish and highly atmospheric!