The show isn’t over for Fulci.
Created in Italy in 2013 with the aim of paying tribute to director Lucio Fulci by Fiore Stravino (vocals), Dome Diego (guitar/synthesizers) and Klem Diglio (bass), the band remains in the underground scene. Ten years later, the trio recruited Edoardo Nicoloso (drums) and Ando Ferraiuolo (guitar), then signed with 20 Buck Spin in 2024 for the release of Duck Face Killings, their fifth album.
With its fourteen new tracks ranging from fifty seconds to three minutes for the longest, Fulci‘s Brutal Death Metal is sprinkled with samples and relatively strange keyboard passages mysteriously signed TV-Crimes. The difference in mood between the massive Vile Butchery and the danceable A Blade in the Dark is noteworthy, but it’s obviously the greasy sounds that predominate on the half-hour album, as evidenced by Fucked with a Broken Bottle and Morbid Lust, two fairly simple but crushing compositions. The same is true of Maniac Unleashed, which nevertheless speeds up with more present leads, then the band welcomes rapper Lord Goat (Non Phixion, Goretex) on Knife, giving the composition a much more dissonant and unexpected touch. Slashereality returns to jerky, Old School brutality, then it’s Skinless vocalist Wood that the Italians strike on Human Scalp Condition, making it one of the album’s most effective and catchy tracks alongside Duck Face Killings, the eponymous title track, where the instrumental is simply massive. An ominous sample officiates on the opening moments of Rotten Apple, followed naturally by pure violence, then it’s with more accessible riffs that Sadistic Murder hits us, not without retaining the thick howls and a surprise break before the final moshpart. The disturbing ambience returns with Lo squartatore and its ominous noises, then Stabbed, Gutted and Loved rolls over us unmercifully before anchoring itself in a more soaring sound that precedes Il miele del diavolo, an electronic-dominated final creation that finally features guitars, drums and even Mario Luce‘s saxophone.
Fulci brings together all the codes of Brutal Death Metal, but also horror, honoring the director from whom the band takes its name. The violence of Duck Face Killings will be remembered, but so will its horrific atmosphere.
85/100
