Fresh off the release of their first full-length “Salespeople” video for the track “Corrupt”, Italian mathcore / post hardcore band LACITTÀDOLENTE (think harsh early versions of Converge, Code Orange, Botch) are joining us today for a special premiere of their new music video for the song “Corurpt”!
“Corrupt” is the first video from Mathcore band LACITTÀDOLENTE, from Milan, Italy. The track is from their debut album SALESPEOPLE, released 18th September 2020 on cassette from Trepanation Records and CD from Fresh Outbreak Records, Hidden Beauty Records, Mother Ship, SHOVE Records, Toten Schwan Records and Violence In The Veins.
The video is a montage of videos representing the hyper-capitalist ills that are its inevitable by-products. By representing the images undiluted in their hidden propagandistic content, the band aims at de-construct the narrative into the mush of irrelevancy that washes away awareness, both of the world and the exploitative nature of the economy. They evoke a looming catastrophe that brings the realization that as much people thrash around, kicking and screaming they crash into the unyielding cacophony of individual or mutual deafening tinnitus. It is a situation that cannot be solved individually or even in groups as the unrelenting Machine is polished enough that its shiny perfection eclipses its flaws for most of the people in our society. The result is a dizzying array of images and purposes that are aimed at all those that feel powerless and aimless in their despair, to find schadenfreude in the sunset of the western world, bitter.
The whole album, ‘Salespeople’ comprises of seven tracks of frenzied mathcore, which conveys their sense of alienation in a visceral fashion. The choice of playing mathcore is not at random or just for aesthetic purposes. The genre allows for expressing the relentless and unceasing heart of the Great City, a place made up of millions of people whose stories crash against the pavement and become murky dark sewage water. Using uneven tempos gives the opportunity to convey a sense of continued yet somehow familiar disorientation that can still hold beauty, oily, shiny and impossible to grasp. The music within is angular, uneven, dissonant, and odd-metered. It is the perfect foil to drive the lyrics that repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, and repeat the city in all its pointlessness.
Much like their experience of the city its sound is direct without any embellishments because YOU ARE ALL / CORRUPT / SLEAZY /EXPLOITING / PROFITEERING / VENAL / SALESPEOPLE
‘Salespeople’ is released as Digital Download, CD and cassette.
Cassettes are available to pre-order here. CDs are available to pre-order here.
Credits: Vocals: Federico Golob, Guitars: Maxwell Thomas, Bass: Massimo Volpe, Drums: Guido Natale; Artwork: Joe; Recorded and Mixed at Trai Studios by Fabio Intraina, Mastered at Cannon Foundation by Jesse Cannon
Track by track commentary:
You are all
“Shredding the self while depriving others of dignity and bones”
In order to make due, get by and be successful, one must shred one’s identity, empathy and sensitivity towards others and their problems. In doing so one can finally be a part of the whole that we gestate in as children. Then our dreams and hopes are magnified to push us to succeed only to then finally be cut down to size to fit purposes of predatory conquest, violence and oppression of others. The only way to be integrated is to nullify others for profit.
“In the spirit of brotherly sharing, I just want to let you know they’re here to grind you down. Evaluate you. Flesh you out. Make a fool of this delusion. With ideas dead, insurrection is all we got.”
Being integrated is success. Even achieving a slither of critical thought brings awareness that no real “successful” entity, state or political movement has carried on an ideology that truly defeats these systems of individualistic hubris. Still, the ideology of liberation is dead, long live the ideology of liberation. Constructing and longing for utopias is the only way out, through protest, insurrection and slaying of the old. Eventually dethroning of profit as the entity presiding and evaluating humanity’s behaviours and its progress.
Corrupt
“Singing the tunes of the last. Chanting and shouting of the last. But it is you. A skin so fragile and unbreathing. welcome home. Wanted to be found, measured and found wanting not for being the least of the last but the trumpeter who is choking on his own spit. All the while the stench of this dying earth is making me salivate. I will be home as we are collectively washing in the sand you laid your throne in. Talk about taking two with one catastrophe. Find out we are heading in, head first, and both feet in at break-neck speed. Because we are grand and I, pathetic. I will welcome the reaping, taking out, taking all that was never enough. Talking about killing the world for a dime or two. I could break free and I was left at riverrun.”
Sleazy
“I will give my last nickel for a rope, debt paid and you’re swinging. One sweet day I will be singing. Staring at the end holding the rope”.
Our generation reflects a unique moment in Western history. Only few adopt conceptions of insurrection as the Machine manages to continue to self-replicate successfully in feeding, clothing and amusing us. This is the backdrop onto which the ecological catastrophe of the coming years will take place. The ideologue of today is immobile and powerless. It is only at the very end, as the cities are awash in the sea and the trees drown in salt, we have the chance to finally take the Oppressor up on their last deal. Selling us the rope to hang them with. Mirthless we will watch them swing knowing we made no difference in the end.
Exploiting
“All that practicing, day in day out. And what for? So, a crowd of drones can make your art the backdrop to their pathetic mating dance. They don’t care about your dreams; they just want something loud so they don’t have to talk” (Trent Lane – “See Jane Run”, Daria S02E11)
Faced with hours and hours of work, in sweaty, overpriced, cockroach-in(f/v)ested basements, the musician slaves away. The only time of respite and life-affirming beauty is when one loses themselves into the live experience and connects with the Other. The object of its toil, its bittersweet, distant lover, much like The City that takes and makes you want none back.
This, this whole thing is for you, my reader.
Yet you will complain if the gig costs more than a lukewarm, cheap beer from a discount supermarket. You will complain if the venue won’t allow you to spout racist, misogynistic and all other sorts of oppressive jokes. You will complain if the band does not play your favourite brand of
Sodacore
now with extra whammy pedal! Pewpew. Fzz fzz.
Because our toil is yours to absentmindedly consume, abuse and eventually discard like the toy that mum would not buy you. The one she eventually did, giving in after your incessant whining. The one you actually did not really want.
Thank you. I love you. I showed u mine, answer me.
Profiteering
“In the machine, the only thing I can throw is my bones. Like Sam Lowry I will dream defeated on the eve of another broken and uneventful day.”
Even for those that do find a warm welcoming spot in the Machine, it does not stop its grind. Eventually, regardless of how well-manufactured you abode, regardless of how many skulls it rests on, it will be crushed. Whether that be its leaky machinery falling miserably on you or your own doing, you’ll be crushed. Eventually, in the Machine there will be no room for you anymore. Your misery will be commodified by retirement homes or companies or other assorted vultures. You’ll feel cornered, haunted and finally ready to be quartered. “Every day, the future looks a little bit darker. But the past, even the grimy parts of it, keep on getting brighter” (Sally Jupiter/Silk Spectre – Watchmen)
Venal
“The towers encroaching and emerging leaning on the city below. A breath, a cough a wheeze.”
In its grandeur the City awaits none. IT WAITS FOR NONE. The foundations of its success rest on your capacity to exist in increasingly adverse environmental conditions. Its towers tall as if to breathe the last breathable air, up above, uncaring as you scuttle your way through the world it created just for you. You are but the miserable pawn of a much larger scheme, unwitting and yet willing. Your life is the fuel, you are to be extracted for the City to chug along mercilessly.
“The pageantry is what sells it all to me. The unspoken tight finger-wrenching, colossal, ready to snap you out.”
Don’t fear, though. They will provide with plenty of amusing propaganda to sink those claws you never realised you have. The rise and fall of the Abusers surely is entertaining. The musings of the unfathomably rich will fill your life. Either you’ll want to be them or to be owned by them; in the depths of some shiny aseptic temple of consumerism. And finally: ǝuǝɔs ɐ ɓuıʞɐɯ sı ǝuǝɔs ɹnoʎ ǝuǝɔs ɐ ɓuıʞɐɯ sı ǝuǝɔs ɹnoʎ ǝuǝɔs ɐ ɓuıʞɐɯ sı ǝuǝɔs ɹnoʎ ǝuǝɔs ɐ ɓuıʞɐɯ sı ǝuǝɔs ɹnoʎ ǝuǝɔs ɐ ɓuıʞɐɯ sı ǝuǝɔs ɹnoʎ ǝuǝɔs ɐ ɓuıʞɐɯ sı ǝuǝɔs ɹnoʎ ǝuǝɔs ɐ ɓuıʞɐɯ sı ǝuǝɔs ɹnoʎ ǝuǝɔs ɐ ɓuıʞɐɯ sı ǝuǝɔs ɹnoʎ ǝuǝɔs ɐ ɓuıʞɐɯ sı ǝuǝɔs ɹnoʎ ǝuǝɔs ɐ ɓuıʞɐɯ sı ǝuǝɔs ɹnoʎ ǝuǝɔs ɐ ɓuıʞɐɯ sı ǝuǝɔs ɹnoʎ ǝuǝɔs ɐ ɓuıʞɐɯ sı ǝuǝɔs ɹnoʎ ǝuǝɔs ɐ ɓuıʞɐɯ sı ǝuǝɔs ɹnoʎ ǝuǝɔs ɐ ɓuıʞɐɯ sı ǝuǝɔs ɹnoʎ ǝuǝɔs ɐ ɓuıʞɐɯ sı ǝuǝɔs ɹnoʎ ǝuǝɔs ɐ ɓuıʞɐɯ sı ǝuǝɔs ɹnoʎ ǝuǝɔs ɐ ɓuıʞɐɯ sı ǝuǝɔs ɹnoʎ ǝuǝɔs ɐ ɓuıʞɐɯ sı ǝuǝɔs ɹnoʎ ǝuǝɔs ɐ ɓuıʞɐɯ sı ǝuǝɔs ɹnoʎ noʎ
Salespeople
“I am the worst salesman I am the worst at what I do. Yet somehow, I keep it up should it kill me to do so. I am the proudest achievement of failure, disappoint, disapprove, defeated.”
