Description
Two years after their second studio album "Veti e culti", which marked their artistic evolution, Le Pietre dei Giganti close a circle with the release of the live album "Prima che il fuoco avvolga ogni cosa" (Live 2022 - 2023).
If fire is an instant allegory for the music that blazes in concert, on the cover of "Prima che il fuoco avvolga ogni cosa" there is a burning idol, representing the conclusion of a phase and the beginning of a new one to come. The esoteric imagery embraces both the contact with nature, from its sinister aspects to its conversely transcendental charge, and the rituality in trying to tame it.
Collecting together multitrack recordings of some of the dates in support of"Veti e culti", specifically at the Auditorium Novecento in Naples and at the Serravalle Rock festival in the province of Pistoia, the Tuscan band - founded in Florence by Lorenzo Marsili (vocals and guitars) and Francesco Utel (guitars, keyboards and vocals), completed by Francesco Nucci (drums and live sample) and Niccolo Pizzamano (bass and synth) - thus restores the primordial and instinctive charge of its neo-psychedelic stoner rock, on stage even more essential and rough, and at the same time offers a window into its naturally advancing sound laboratory, also supporting ambient dilations.
The setlist, of nine songs, therefore draws mainly from the material of Veti e culti - from the singles Veti e culti, a dialogue with one's own shadow, and"Quando l'ultimo se ne andra", a blues about detachment from one's roots, to the suites Foresta II (La bestia) and Foresta III (L'ultimocrepuscolo), up to the apocalyptic grunge of Ohm and the melancholy of Polvere - and partly from the debut album Abissi from 2019 (DMA, the title track Abissi and Canzone del sole, the latter with a tribute to the Neapolitan band Sula Ventrebianco).
"Prima che il fuoco avvolga ogni cosa" fixes in time the current moment of the Tuscan group, four on stage too, between wild energy and further dynamics triggered date after date. Compared to their original versions, for example, Ohm opens with an extended improvisation with a lysergic feel, Foresta III (L'ultimocrepuscolo) features a minimal and analog arrangement inducing a trance-like state full of low frequencies, the atmosphere of Polvere - rendered in the studio through wind instruments - is translated into guitar effects. <>. A hatching that is both evil and propitiatory.
