Gus Defelice doesn’t just shred—he bleeds. This most recent single ‘Luring Depths’ from the Italian multi-instrumentalist and producer is an exercise in taking real emotional intensity and turning it into a pure language of head banging riffs and skull rattling rhythms. Right from the thunderous opening salvo it’s clear we’re in a richly immersive sonic world of Defelice’s own haunted design.Fueled by churning, ominous guitar figure (and hammering drums) it sets the tone for an oppressive, doom filled atmosphere. Instead, “Luring Depths” ebbs and flows with an impressive dynamism but rather than bludgeoning from the outset.
Dense riffage is spiralling lead lines that pierce and recede, and the totality of this adds up to noticeable tonal shading and pacing of a narrative. Defelice crucially uses his instrumental prowess not solely for its own sake, but as a means to achieve potent personal catharsis. The single is birthed from the trauma of a recurring nightmare from a childhood in which Defelice is a witness to, rather than a participant, in a violent act. From seismic riff shift to scorching fretboard run, every one of those exorcisms of repressed fears and troubled family dynamics takes the form of sound, not words, and is positively exhilarating.
Only the blistering climactic solo of the track seals its position as an unassailable artistic statement. The central riffs take turns giving way to winding, feverish fretboard runs, so much so that you can envisage Defelice’s fingers working at peak capacity, unleashing a stream of impassioned shredding that burns itself into your synapses quickly. With his harrowing life experiences grafted onto a wave of complex sonic textures, he’s made a singular and profoundly moving artistic statement: a thunderous metaphysical reckoning expressed through the only language a cranium can understand: cranium rattling riffs.
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