With a band name translating to hurricane, you expect turbulence as a listener; a rollercoaster of a listening experience. You get that and even more when you are dragged into the vortex of Uragano´s music.
We had not heard about the Italian band Uragano before it hit our eardrums when we premiered their first single earlier this month. But the band has secretly been whirling in the Italian underground for ten years after it emerged from Sanremo. And here it is, their first full album with turbulent music fusing everything hardcore and pouring out frustrated Screamo vocals at odds with the surroundings.
We premiered the second song ”Capo Danno” and the way it is written and played is a good example of what was to come throughout the whole album. As with the rest of the album, the song is massive, often dissonant with frenzied drumming. The music is as fragmented as engaging, with shifts and turns, sometimes contradicting the Screamo Post-Hardcore with a lingering melody in the song’s swirling vortex. This is what you first encounter in the opening song, ”Intro Emo”. It starts with a strumming guitar, muffled screaming, and soaring synths before urgently spoken words are forcing one out of the comfort zone. As on other songs, the synth is soaring with a melodic theme immersing the music in the mode of female vocals inducing an undulating sensation.
But that sensation does of course not last because the songs are Punk-typically short on the album. Another thing that makes me think of Punk is the anarchistic attitude towards the music they make. It is as if they want to deconstruct their imploding music, tear it apart. At first listen, it might sound like chaos without any direction and when you give it another spin and a third and several more, you discover the genius of their turbulent music as the kaleidoscope of colors explodes before your inner eye.
When I mention Punk, it is to more underline the fierceness and urgency of the short songs, the way they are written is as far away from three-bars fast Punk as one probably can be. These are intricate songs with a lot of surprises, subtle shifts, and fusing elements. The first two songs on the album are short on the outside, but long on the inside to use a metaphor that describes every song here, both the two long ones and the other short ones.
The two-minutes-long third song ”Pinguino” is pure energy as it races through the moves from the cold flimsy opening guitar supporting the Screamo vocals while the music takes a short breath and dives into distorted heaviness with powerful some drumming and thundering bass. It lasts seconds before the track stops with a couple of strums on a clean guitar before the engaging Post-Hardcore scream sonics are back hitting with despair until a new sudden shift with a clean guitar and urgently spoken words. The music surges with a piercing synth following a slightly dissonant melody before the music stops. Phew.
These songs are like an overture to the first long song, ”Indonesia” and its eight minutes open with a slower pace, getting ready for a longer journey. The musical theme develops in the layers and is driven forward by melodic grooving bass, drums cymbals, and guitar accompanying the Screamo spoken words. The song changes with a repetitive synth patterns and bursts from the guitar and droplets sprinkling over it immersing a muffled sampled voice. The attention turns to what goes on in the layers as a distorted guitar begins to rise fusing the musical elements until everything explodes into Screamo Hardcore vocals and the music is driven forward by energetic drumming and bass. The fast-paced music gives a sense of energetic classic rock´n´roll as it races forward until the sonics are splintered and simmer down and a sampled voice talks about penguins until the snare drum pushes impatiently for an even quicker pace, but it all fades away.
”Djent 1” and ”Djent 2” follow rapidly and provide dense and low-tuned distorted music that swirls around itself with a dissonant timbre in the midst. The tunes’ instruments surge forward coming in from all sides increasing the tumultuous parts. A shift in the timbre of the first song to some lighter pitches and a new melody without the pace decreasing but racing towards the end. There is no pause before diving into the kaleidoscope of ”Djent 2”. The song is composed out of contradictions where the synths hold back with a melodic theme softening the harshness of the vocals and the distorted guitar while the bass and drums try to pull fast forward. The dualism they induce in this and other songs makes it a pure energy to listen to. It is as if they deconstruct the songs while playing them.
If Google is to be believed, the first line of the next song ”No Hype” is ”We’re not like that band of your fucking friends on the cover”. That is true and they illustrate it through a repetitive whirl of strong Post-Hardcore with irritated Screamo vocals before it all widens out in a synth-based soundscape with low-end bass and clear guitar, still fast-paced, with Progressive Metal elements meeting Post-Rock. Quite amazing for a two-minute song. Equally amazing is the next ”Encore” as it propels forward with subtle changes in the flow of dissonant music in the undercurrents. Music at the highest velocity pummels towards the listener for whom it is unclear where this will lead as it deconstructs itself (again!) and seems to fall apart into sparkling sound effects while the screams are desperate.
The music on the last song, ”Finale, spins around its own axis, and the vocals with both softer touches and surges of tumultuous energetic music induced by distorted synths pushing headwards. At one time, the music falls apart in static sounds before surging back to a new height of engaging dissonant wild Post-Hardcore. Toward the end, the music builds a pulsating rising crescendo to make the finale of the album utterly intense as all the instruments and all sounds fuse and build a mountain of sound. Just to fade away on one last guitar string, the finale.
