Apparently since Mr. Vikernes with his now “iconic” Burzum got global attention and cult thanks to the crimes committed by this Norwegian metalhead, the trend or maybe to more accurately describe the phenomenon of one man black metal projects have become a reality and a global underground “delicacy”.

La Tradizione Ermetica (The Hermetic Tradition… hey Italian looks pretty simple if you know Spanish…hope I’m not putting my foot in my mouth here!) follows pretty much that premise, a one man project with dirty almost shitty sound, evil raw black metal that only makes sense and stands out from the rest thanks to a couple of melodies inserted into the mix with the help of unconventional (for metal that is) instruments… the name of the album pretty much wraps up my introduction paragraph if you think about it!

So; is this good? Well it depends; if you are into raw, underground, almost home recorded black metal, that continues the tradition of pilling blast beats one on top of the other, while a shrieking (not exaggerated in this record I may add!) voice spills mayhem all over the place then you are going to fucking love this album; and if you are on of those black “elitist” (I borrow that word from the extremely childish US presidential campaign) then the simple fact that this guy is not signed to any big metal label is just going to give you another reason to get one of the very limited copies there are out there (another important factor if you are a true black elitist).

To be honest the album is pretty generic, full of the basics and hard to distinguish from the great mass of underground black, but it those have its moments, tracks like “Trasmutazione” show that Mr. Screamer does have some nice ideas and good rhythms hidden within his arsenal, sadly those moments don’t last, despite some nice flute sections on “Veglia Perenne”, they do bring about a sudden fantastic approach at madness, but for some reason and my personal background playing non stop Zelda… I can’t help but remember Link playing with the Ocarina of Time! God dammit I’m such a geek!!!

To sum it up, a good underground black metal record, that lacks of something to make it stand above your typical small print black record.