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Fuoco Fatuo Is Doomed to Death on 'Backwater'

Stream the Italian funeral doom horde's ominous new Profound Lore debut

The Italian funeral doom quartet of Fuoco Fatuo is primed for their debut on Profound Lore Records come April 7, and it's a corker. Since their 2011 inception, the Varese-based band have come out with a few smaller releases and a 2014 full-length, The Viper Slithers in the Ashes of What Remains. Now, nearly three years later, the occult death doom entity turned funerary force has returned with an oppressive new album named Backwater.

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"Backwater stands for a forgotten place, to which nobody has physical access anymore. Imagine a vast swampland filled with smoke, dead trees, and putrid water—no living creature, no hope. You can explore it just through your mind, feeling the isolation of this gloomy land until you can breathe its oppressive air. That is kind of what we imagine when playing Backwater's tracks," guitarist Giovanni Piazza told Noisey. "As the oil painting on the cover suggests, cold and abstractness are the rulers of this journey through oblivion. More in particular, the painting represents our vision of the magma inside the Earth, slowly cooling down without losing its destroying firmness. We have to thank Raoul of View from the Coffin for perfectly catching it. The feeling behind the composing process was very figurative: through it, we aim to lead the listener into the abyss—if they can handle it, of course."

Funeral doom's inherent heaviness arises from an overwhelming emotional weight, and the most successful bands are able to bend this weight to their will. Fuoco Fatuo's new hour-long endeavor capitalizes on this and other hallmark traits of funeral and death doom, which—combined with a suffocating aesthetic—makes for a truly ominous record.

The quartet also opts to continuously bury a listener in sound instead of offering respite through atmospheric dirge, like Mournful Congregation or Funeral Moth typically do. Take "Perpetual Apochaos" for example; much of the album's third song is built on colossal walls of droning riffs that pour out of the guitars and continue throughout the track's entirety, ultimately providing a strong build-up to what is perhaps Backwater's greatest moment, "Nemesis." The 17-minute track is a harrowing conclusion to Fuoco Fatuo's opus, where the drone of the guitars is met with a greater sense of urgency from Davide Bacchetta's crash cymbals and the deathly growl of Milo Angeloni. The surmounting abyssal of instrumentation makes for a gripping finish.

Listen to the album below. Backwater is officially out this Friday, April 7. Order the album through Profound Lore's website (CAN) and MerchTable (USA/RoW) now.

Cody Davis is huffing sulphur on Twitter.