
After their awesome contribution to Heavy Psych Sounds’ “Doom Sessions”-Series the band from Ossi, Sardignia, went straight back to work and wrote some more songs to bless our ears and get rid of the cleanliness inside by purging it with fire. The same fire that they hint at in their name – 1782 was the year the last witch was sentenced, tortured and finally killed. The last one in all of Europe!
More than 220 years later, December 2018 to be precise, drummer Gabriele Fancellu and guitarist / singer Marco Nieddu formed 1782 and had the chutzpah to go straight into recording mode. But this decision was perfect as their first single quickly became a hit all across the continent and now in 2021 they release their second full-length a mere 28 months after their inception.
“From The Graveyard” is just what the title hints at – it is grave, serene, dark, compelling and certainly scary in a way – if you listen to pop radio. The now trio, after the addition of Francesco Pintore on bass, lays out a carpet of heavy riffs whose tempi are pretty mid-tempo but nicely distorted without ever being dragged out too long. One might say that there is a lot of repetition and fuzz in their sound, but hey – it’s Heavy Psych Sounds, what did you expect? What you see is what you get, and this band once again shows HPS unique standing as one of Europe’s main stoner/sludge/doom labels and certainly Italy’s standout label for all things fuzzy and distorted with a focus on grooming Italian talent.
The record is a real grower but it is also quite appealing at first listen. Its eight songs spanning 43 minutes of doom and sludge shows you the dark lurking in the darkest corners of the graveyard with voices from the undead speaking to us, trying to lull into a false sense of security. Not false because they will attack soon, but false because you can never leave – the graveyard, the allure of 1782 and the growing attraction this band emanates with every bassline, riff and drum kick. Of course, the first you notice are the fuzzy and yet, somehow warm riffs because they are mighty but the most interesting bit might be the bass. Take “Black Void” for example – the bass holds Marco’s guitars aloft by pushing them to the forefront where they can join his vocals as the center of attention. But “Black Void” also shows the band’s willingness for very moody parts they let the organ-synth-outro slowly fade out for more than two minutes. Interestingly this also works as the watershed in the middle of the record.
The level of pagan occultism is also on display on the cover where the eye beholds a sea of skulls below a lot of candles and a horned goat in the middle – all symbols being connected to paganism and heathendom, the occult and the witchcraft that ended in 1782. Nieddu’s vocals are not always present because he only seldom uses his voice on the record and very often it has a grave-like quality to it. It sounds as if he is talking to us “From the Grave(yard)”.
By and large one cannot but congratulate the band for deepening their doom appeal without turning to funeral doom. One might criticize their lack of completely new structures, but is that really something one should expect by 1782? Probably not, because if you don’t you will find a lot of epic and dark structures on this “From the Graveyard”!
Thorsten