Track By Tracks: Cornea - Apart (2021)
Apart is a peculiar debut album, not only because it’s a record that
breaks a lot of cliches, both sonically and graphically, but also because
it had a really hard gestation, like a child who struggled to be born. The
record tells tales of suffering, separation, strain, loss and oblivion through the
destroying force and bittersweet lullabies inspired from mother nature.
The band Cornea was founded by guitarist Nicola Mel in 2015, exactly five
years before the release of Apart. Five years of concerts, line up changes,
personal troubles, illness, it was almost like the whole cosmo wanted to halt
this project, but the band kept believing and eventually in 2020, with a line up
composed by Andrea Greggio on drums, Sebastiano Pozzobon on bass guitar
and Nicola Mel on guitars and synths, Apart was ready to be published and
like it wasn’t already enough, the pandemic happened.
This child was kicking so hard inside the band’s metaphorical womb, and even
if releasing a debut album during the Covid-19 outbreak was intimidating and
frightening, the band went on and bravely released Apart on the 16th of April,
2020.
A gift to escape:
Being locked down in our homes felt like being imprisoned, and the desire to
escape grew bigger everyday during the first wave of the pandemic. When
Apart was released, the band publicly stated it was “their gift to let people
escape” (metaphorically of course), and it delivers.
Apart is an adventure, a journey, it has the ability to take the listener by hand
and let him travel in a world made of primitive and veracious emotions,
stemming from the band’s psychedelic roots, ending in thunderous heavy post
rock. There is something about this record that feels familiar, it just resonates
within, without being pompous or too complicated, it translates perfectly those
thematics of separation and alienation from reality and the loss of something
significant.
Cornea live at Psycho Fest 2017
Apart is not only about grief though, the sound is bittersweet, melancholic, and
yet there is hope at the end of the journey.
What is evident straightaway from listening to Apart is that this record is not
the classic post rock album infused with layered tremolo picking guitars and
long songs, the sound is almost reminiscent of an alternative metal mixed with
shoegaze and the songs are led by iconic riffs that are catchy and effective.
The initial melody of “Daydreamer” cradle the listener through a plumbeous
scenery, the monolithic riffs of “Kingdom” slams the listener’s face picturing an
arduous pilgrimage through the desert while the pace of “Will Your Heart Grow
Fonder?” feels like a racing heart, beating and suffering, asking to give all the
love it has inside.
The first half of the record is already filled with different palettes of emotions,
from psychedelic and blurred post rock, to gritty post metal with doom
influences and swinging heavy rock galore.
The second part of the album has no fillers, every song has an identity on its
own while still sounding cohesive with the rest of the record.
The slow and sweet “Saltwater” is reminiscent of a bed made of flowers, but
all of a sudden something goes wrong and all the sweetness crushes in a
stormy and turbulent black ocean while in “Sentinels Of A Northern Sky” the
band carry the listener on a tribal shoegaze trip that ends on epic screaming
melodies.
The final song “Diver” is subaqueous and suspended, ending the record with
heavy walls of distortion and a recurring rhythm resembling of an hammer
hitting the final nails on the coffin, leaving the listener wanting more.
A visual work
The band unveil their source of inspiration and their motif quite explicitly
through their motto: “We are the sound of what your eyes don’t see, play our
music loud” and this clearly shows that their aim is to translate emotions and
make the invisible subconscious…audible. They don’t stop there though, and
through Apart’s cover artwork, the artist Nicola Mel with his monicker “A
Spring Of Murder” manages to make all the aforementioned emotions visible
and represented in an iconic artwork that mirrors the character of the album.
No cliches, no clouds, skies or mountains, just this ancient figure opening her
chest, showing an empty ribcage, like mother nature inviting you to look at the
utterly unacceptable truth about the meaning of life, the union of two fragile
and innocent creatures severed and interrupted, and the crown representing
the division of people from other people.
There is a message in this artwork, it states that life is brutally harsh but is
surrounded by delicate and beautiful things, the nature blooms and watches
upon us while we wither and die and, as humans, fight and inflict pain on each
other.
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