Stormo: What Matters Doesn’t Die
“I think we make records when we have something to say,” suggests STORMO vocalist Luca Rocco. It’s the kind of answer one gets fairly often when chatting to a band about what makes their new album special, but one listen to the record Rocco’s talking about should make it very clear that this isn’t your usual press trail platitude. The Italian post-hardcore quartet’s fourth and latest full-length Endocannibalismo – their first for Prosthetic Records – has lots to say indeed, an urgent meditation on the death of the world as we know it delivered with all the emotion and intensity that has earned the band a respected name both in their home country and across much of Europe.
Named for the practice of consuming the body parts of deceased relatives in a display of mourning and honouring the dead, Endocannibalismo’s themes are not purely destructive and defeatist. The record speaks of death as a process of transformation, the hope that where one thing ends another might begin being something that grows ever more salient as we seem to watch the world burn before our eyes. As Rocco puts it, “While going through the themes of death we came across endocannibalism and we noticed that it matched with the direction we were taking. It perfectly represents an ecological way of understanding the world, which is exactly what we were looking for.”
As ever, Rocco explores these themes entirely in Italian, acknowledging to us that the process of sharing his lyrics with others is daunting yet necessary, and that he has learned a lot over the years. Even to non-native speakers, the passion is clear in every word he screams on Endocannibalismo, and the translations reveal a deeply poetic streak that is well-matched to the angst and intensity of the sonic maelstrom Rocco’s bandmates produce behind him. “I wouldn’t be able to write in another language,” emphasises the vocalist. “I write mostly as a form of self care and the best part of it then goes in STORMO and becomes something different and not mine anymore. Translations would cut the flow of this process.”
Similarly undiminished is the band’s bracing live energy, carefully curated over years of touring that have seen them share stages with the revered likes of CONVERGE, FULL OF HELL and LA DISPUTE, to name just a few. One of Endocannibalismo’s greatest triumphs is the extent to which that energy has been transferred to the band’s recorded output, with most of the tracks on the record delivered in two to three-minute flurries that leave the listener as breathless as Rocco often sounds. “Through the years we’ve slowly created a more direct, harsh and raw sound and we probably generated it show after show,” explains Rocco. “If possible we try to play our new songs during our tours before recording it to see how it feels to actually play the music we’re writing and we adjust it consequently.”
“This new record was entirely written during the two lockdowns, so we did not have the chance to do anything mentioned above,” he continues. “But we had the possibility to stop and think about what we wanted to create and to try different options and this probably allowed us to synthesize and cut what wasn’t necessary.”
No doubt it helps as well that the album was recorded in just nine days with Giulio Ragno Favero at Lignum Lab in Villa del Conte, Padova, the intentional intensity of the process yielding exactly the results the band have always sought. “We’ve always recorded live in the studio, to stay closer to the live experience and to make the record sound more real,” affirms Rocco. “Also you need to find a good balance between what you wanna do and what you can afford. Having limits helps to keep yourself focused sometimes… Everything starts from guitar riffs, then we rearrange it in the rehearsal room with bass and drums, and when the song is almost finished I put vocals on it. Fortunately it’s kind of a fluent process.”
Even on a personal level, Endocannibalismo sees Rocco pursuing something raw, unadulterated and deeply primal, arguably even more so than on previous records. He elaborates, “If before I was trying to add effects and stuff to the vocals I’m now focused on keeping it as it is, exploring it physically. I’ve started a couple of years ago to study throat and overtone singing, and even if I can’t actually handle those techniques, it changed the approach I have to the vocals.”
But just as approaches evolve and develop over time, and just as there is ultimately a theme of transformation at the heart of Endocannibalismo, there are other things that STORMO wouldn’t change for the world. Rocco’s hopes for the future are simple, “to keep on playing music, to make new records and tour everywhere.” There’s an air of contentment about such a statement, one that’s made clearer still when we ask him to reflect on the band’s now reasonably lengthy career of well over a decade and a half, and particularly if there is anything he knows now that he wishes he knew back then. “We’ve done what we could, in the way we could and we enjoyed it and created something that, for us, is beautiful and apparently other people appreciate it too. That’s way more than enough.”
Endocannibalismo is out now via Prosthetic Records.
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