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Italy has never had a shortage of ripping hardcore bands and SLOI is no exception. Featuring members of IMPULSO, TUONO and ASTIO, SLOI execute furious D-beat hardcore punk, channeling the clamorous spirit of legends past, such as WRETCHED, NEGAZIONE, INDIGESTI and STIGMATHE. They don’t let their influences overshadow their own work, however, which is firmly rooted in the eternal state of horrifying affairs.
Hailing from Trento, SLOI take their name from a lead factory that poisoned the area over 40 years ago, called Società Lavorazioni Organiche Inorganiche. Many of its workers died of lead poisoning, while others took their own life in the Pergine Asylum, where they were being treated as mentally ill. SLOI vocalize seven nightmarish tracks in their native tongue, arguably one of the finest languages for spiting out hardcore punk, and each one will have you gripping the edge of your seat in white-knuckled fury.
Swaying between full-blow D-beat assaults, complete with wall-of-noise fuzz, and pit-and-pogo ready bangers to satisfy your knuckle-dragging urges, they possess a razor-sharp production that is satisfyingly noisy and reverbed. In turn, each track assembles some of the finest features of the genre, hitting hard with nail-biting intensity: the drums crash on you like a pound of bricks, the guitars manically pace between savage riffs and crunchy chords you can sink your teeth into, and the bass is laid down throbbing and thick, pounding at your chest like an shock wave from a lead factory that’s just collapsed in a fire.
Atop the wreckage stand SLOI, along with a cohort of peers currently flying the black flag of Italian hardcore resistance.
Our take: Iron Lung Records brings us this hardcore banger from Trento in northern Italy. That’s the same part of the country as Sorry State’s own Golpe, and I hear some musical similarities between the two bands. Specifically, SLOI shares Golpe’s predilection for playing d-beat hardcore that hovers between mid-paced and three-quarters paced, never too brisk with the tempos but crushingly heavy when the BPMs drop. Also like Golpe, SLOI’s riffs are rock solid, not dazzling you with too many notes, but marching forward with the steady power of a massive army of foot soldiers. SLOI takes their name from a lead factory that poisoned its surrounding area in the Italian alps for four decades, and the name seems appropriate since there’s a palpable sense of desperation in SLOI’s music; in contrast to hardcore that sounds defiant or just plain pissed, SLOI’s music sounds pained, wounded even. That comes out in the hoarse vocals and the haunting, dissonant guitar leads that pop up throughout the record. With only seven tracks, this 45rpm 12” is over before you know it, but it’s lean and mean as hell.
Hailing from Trento, SLOI take their name from a lead factory that poisoned the area over 40 years ago, called Società Lavorazioni Organiche Inorganiche. Many of its workers died of lead poisoning, while others took their own life in the Pergine Asylum, where they were being treated as mentally ill. SLOI vocalize seven nightmarish tracks in their native tongue, arguably one of the finest languages for spiting out hardcore punk, and each one will have you gripping the edge of your seat in white-knuckled fury.
Swaying between full-blow D-beat assaults, complete with wall-of-noise fuzz, and pit-and-pogo ready bangers to satisfy your knuckle-dragging urges, they possess a razor-sharp production that is satisfyingly noisy and reverbed. In turn, each track assembles some of the finest features of the genre, hitting hard with nail-biting intensity: the drums crash on you like a pound of bricks, the guitars manically pace between savage riffs and crunchy chords you can sink your teeth into, and the bass is laid down throbbing and thick, pounding at your chest like an shock wave from a lead factory that’s just collapsed in a fire.
Atop the wreckage stand SLOI, along with a cohort of peers currently flying the black flag of Italian hardcore resistance.
Our take: Iron Lung Records brings us this hardcore banger from Trento in northern Italy. That’s the same part of the country as Sorry State’s own Golpe, and I hear some musical similarities between the two bands. Specifically, SLOI shares Golpe’s predilection for playing d-beat hardcore that hovers between mid-paced and three-quarters paced, never too brisk with the tempos but crushingly heavy when the BPMs drop. Also like Golpe, SLOI’s riffs are rock solid, not dazzling you with too many notes, but marching forward with the steady power of a massive army of foot soldiers. SLOI takes their name from a lead factory that poisoned its surrounding area in the Italian alps for four decades, and the name seems appropriate since there’s a palpable sense of desperation in SLOI’s music; in contrast to hardcore that sounds defiant or just plain pissed, SLOI’s music sounds pained, wounded even. That comes out in the hoarse vocals and the haunting, dissonant guitar leads that pop up throughout the record. With only seven tracks, this 45rpm 12” is over before you know it, but it’s lean and mean as hell.