Gianluca Becuzzi – Black Mantra

Cultural roots have always been as much as important as musical ones in Gianluca Becuzzi’s vast discography. If some of his works reflect upon the nature of music and the way it is perceived and consumed today in contrast to the past, recent or not – read our review of “Deeper” as a reference – others dwell deeper in the cultural heritage of our shared world reaching atavistic and almost shamanic inner dimensions.

“Black Mantra” chooses to focus on Hindu mysticism and tradition. The figure of Kali, the goddess of death, destruction and change, lingers on the album – almost like a terrible and beautiful dancer bringing on the karmic cycle of death and rebirth in every track. The tools of the trade are slow, monolithic drone movements, down-tuned distortions, Eastern sounds, chants and cinematic orchestration. The result is music requiring the listener full attention and participation – something probably considered quite demanding in modern fast-music consumption. Of course, easy music this is not.

If “The Hidden Temple” opens our perception with shrilling noises evolving into majestic and grave guitar distortions and enchanting female rituals, the following “Mother Destruction” shows the Black Goddess in all of her power via ethereal choirs and sudden burst of sharp sounds and epic orchestrations with a strong cinematic feeling.

“Evening Star” plays with more “traditional” drone structures choosing minimal soundscapes full of nervous and delayed effects reaching dark and self-contained climaxes, while “Dance And Revelation” gives space to voices and guitars conjuring a piece mixing ethnic aspects and doom-metal divings into the deep.              

“Kundalini Rising” is an exercise in restriction and release, a suspended atmosphere dominates the first half of the track with its ghostly strings and eerie drones, while the second one bursts open with  obsessive distorted loops consuming themselves in the finale where electro-acoustic sounds take the stage. “Bad Karma” ends our dark voyage not with an explosion, but with a black mantra crawling amidst distant orchestral distortion and Indian influences reaching even beautiful moments of hidden melody before collapsing into majestic and epic distortions that slowly fade into nothingness.

“Black Mantra” is as inexorable and relentless in its music as in its theme, without any need of excessive attacks to the jugular. Here there is no space for human rage or anger, instead the slow process of ions and never-ending birth-death-rebirth circles are repeated in the album’s soundscape. A spiritual experience, if a dark one, is the result of the attentive and not passive listening experience. The meditative function of music is restored in an experience that can be used for trance-like inner sessions where the inner-self becomes a mirror for a universal concept frowned upon in the Western world too often: the one of death, destruction, and their necessity for life and new beginnings.  

Release date: September 23rd, 2023.

Text by: Davide Pappalardo.