Granted, the back end of September is getting pretty crowded with new releases as everyone tries to pack in their wares before things quiet down for the winter (as much as they ever really quiet down), but you might want to hold a spot the week of Sept. 22 for Italian classic doomers Epitaph. The Verona-based outfit who formed in 1987 and didn’t release their first album until getting back together ahead of 2014’s Crawling out of the Crypt will issue their much less it-took-decades-to-make-this-happen sophomore long-player that day in the form of Claws on High Roller Records, and it’s a five-track/41-minute slab of Pentagram/Sabbath/Vitus-style doomery that’s preaching righteously to the converted. Doom for doomers, man. Sometimes nothing else will do.

The PR wire brings a heads up:

EPITAPH – Claws – High Roller Records

Release date: 22.09.2017
Distribution: Soulfood

More than 30 years after the birth of EPITAPH, the Italian Doom masters from Verona unleash their brand new full-length album »Claws« via High Roller Records. In the eighties and nineties, Italy spawned a big black mass of great doomy bands, as the underground flourished with illustrious names such as Death SS, Black Hole, Sacrilege, Zess or Abysmal Grief… Epitaph were an integral part of this glorious movement, having close bonds with other legendary acts, namely Black Hole and Sacrilege.

In the guise of »Crawling Out Of The Crypt« EPITAPH had made a new start in 2014 with a record that was mostly made up of old compositions and ideas.

However, the band’s brand new studio album is entitled »Claws«. Original drummer Mauro Tollini explains: “»Claws« is our little warped, insidious creature. It’s the first release of ours to be ascribed to the current line-up, in its scope and not just in execution. It’s a harder and perhaps more demanding listen. In most respects it’s a genuine EPITAPH album. We’re not giving up on riffs, melodies and a pinch of the horrific! It also sports illustrations for each track, thus continuing the grisly gallery we had started with the ‘debut’ album.”

The main riff in “Waco The King”, surely one of the key songs on this exceptional album, has a certain Tony Iommi feel about it, very dark, very heavy, and quite rocky… “That’s undeniably true,” says Mauro. “We grew up in the eighties, listening to the generally reviled incarnations of Black Sabbath of that time, as well as to their older classics (we’re glad to hear that the late period of Sabbath history is finally getting more recognition!). Their sharper riffing surely influenced the band, and has stuck since then.”

After the release of »Claws«, EPITAPH will be out on the road for a lengthy European tour with their label mates Procession.

Epitaph is:
MAURO “Tolly” TOLLINI: drums
NICO (the doomer) MURARI: bass
LORENZO “Loah” LOATELLI: guitar
EMILIANO (il confessore) CIOFFI: vocals

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Epitaph, “Ancient Rite” official video

It’s worth noting immediately that no one in the band 3 Mexicans From Gorma is actually Mexican. They’re Italian. The band hails from Verona and its three members – Luigi Calzavara on vocals/guitar, Marco Dal Molin on bass and Igor Lanaro on drums – make their debut on G.O.R.M.A. (Go Down Records), a narrative concept album that tells the story of a cowboy who wanders into a ghost town and gets trapped there by demons and forced to stay for eternity, and in case you’re wondering about style, as it says on the back panel of the jewel case artwork, “3 Mexicans From Gorma plays ONLY FUCKING hard Mexicans stoner music.” So right away, we know they are definitely not not fucking.

G.O.R.M.A. – the name of the town in the plot said to be derived from the band members’ names (I can see it with Lanaro and Dal Molin, though I don’t know how you account for Calzavara in that) – has several sketch interludes, complete with windy backdrop, heavily-accented speech and old-time radio sound effects of horse hooves and opening and closing doors. There’s one in the beginning, one in the middle, and one at the end, and between them, the trio riff rocks their way through songs mostly derivative of the desert/stoner mainstays without adding too much to the mix in terms of their own individuality. As I listen though, I almost wish both the sketches and the lyrics to the songs – we open with “Preface/Back to the Desert…” before “Intro” and “Intermission” take hold, so yes, it’s a while before the album gets going – were in Italian, and that there was more of a Western feel in the music. 3 Mexicans From Gorma touches on that, but with Italy’s rich history in the film genre of the Western – not to mention the accompanying music and incredibly influential work of Ennio Morricone – it feels like there’s an opportunity that Calzavara, Dal Molin and Lanaro are letting slip through their collective fingers. Our hero meets a mariachi later into the album, a two-and-a-half-minute acoustic interlude ensues that sets up the Kyuss-esque instrumental “Wah Wah,” and there was another acoustic interlude earlier in the form of “First Day, Jen… When I See You…” but that hardly feels like it’s all 3 Mexicans From Gorma could have done to play with the aesthetic they’ve taken on, and with all the interludes, sketches, intros and outros, there’s never really a flow established on G.O.R.M.A. from one song to the next.

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