Suez

It took eight years to dig deep, reach the bones of the earth and try to re-emerge. Eight years of pain, disintegration and recomposition, lacerations and cauterization, falling in love and disillusionment that as always happens in life have left an indelible mark, a deep scar that sometimes, touching it with your fingers, makes you feel, if not stronger, at least survived. Once the illusion of growth has passed, Suez have found a profoundly changed world. A bloody world, a world made of divisions, individualism, ferocity. A world where the others are just someone to defeat and bury, to hit and overcome in order to achieve personal gain or for simple derision, as an outlet for frustration. A world where not even atrocities leave a significant mark in people’s consciences. A world whose bones, banging together, make up a funeral march to remind us that indifference is an incurable disease.

The Italian alt-rock band from Cesena – Luigi Battaglia on vocals and synths, Ivan Braghittoni on guitars, Marcello Nori on drums and percussions, Manuel Valeriani on bass – reacted to the surrounding situation by recording The Bones Of The Earth, their fourth full-length record in almost twenty years of activity, mixed and mastered by Lena Sutter, to be released on CD and all digital platforms on April 16, 2021 via Cagnìn Records.

The Bones Of The Earth is a cry of pain dedicated to those who are still capable of suffering, dreaming, building an escape towards a better future. The band has developed the nine songs in the tracklist during a work in progress that lasted about five years, crossing different genres and moods. “Our goal is always to create a result that can be traced back to Suez, that sounds familiar, properly ‘ours’, but at the same time that can be completely different from the previous records“. The post-humanism of the lyrics is reflected in the post-rock, post-punk, new wave and no wave texture of the music, characterized by a dark songwriting but with changing instrumental openings and an almost neo-folk intimacy. The group’s background ranges from a landmark such as Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds to The Cure and Wall Of Voodoo, from the influence of Teenage Jesus And The Jerks and Young Marble Giants to that of Pere Ubu, Xiu Xiu and Liars.

The Bones Of The Earth is also a record made of images. Starting from the cover one, taken by the photographer Marcella Magalotti during a work on the footsteps of the migrants, from landing to reception facilities. To continue with the photos that inspired various songs: the first single We Are Universe was born from the vision of the pic of a Syrian man who finds his children in a refugee camp and kisses them through the barbed wire, with the dream that there is something in this existence that reconnects the horrors caused by men to men to the positive situations that we are still capable of generating. Other polaroids: the title track The Bones Of The Earth is dedicated to Alan Kurdi and the many like him who didn’t make it; Hit The Man comes from the images of the Hungarian reporter who kicked and tripped the refugees, emblem of a still privileged part of people trying to stem the desperate ones; Kobane tells the story of Ayse Deniz Karacagil, the girl who became a fighter on the Kurdish front and was killed in battle. One of the most cinematic track, Humanity Is Dead, the second single from the record, reminds us clearly that humanity dies when we care less and less what happens to the others, as long as it doesn’t happen to ourselves…

The Bones Of The Earth is a dangling wandering that keeps us tied to the hope that there are still tears to shed and courage to fight.