Lucynine — Melena

Lucynine — Melena

Lucynine’s Melena (out now via Talheim Records Germany) is a pitch black descent into the guts of the human psyche, a post black, post hardcore, avantgarde fever dream that feels less like an album and more like a cry for help recorded in real time. Written, performed, and produced entirely by Sergio Bertani, Melena is raw, intimate, and utterly fucking fearless. Gone are the sprawling conceptual landscapes of Amor Venenat, in their place stands something stripped bare, written under duress, built from blood and dread.

From the first note of “Uomo in Mare,” you know this isn’t background music, it’s confrontation. Guitars grind and howl while Bertani’s voice drags itself through the mix like a wounded animal, half screamed, half whispered confessions hurled into the void. “Narciso non Muore” crawls with self disgust and defiance, an anthem for those who’ve stared too long into the mirror and found nothing but static. The title track, “Melena,” is a slow bleeding masterpiece, six minutes of collapsing structure and suffocating atmosphere that never quite resolves, because in this world, nothing does.

The production is deliberately claustrophobic. Bertani’s choices make you feel trapped inside the songs — drums pounding like migraine pulses, guitars smearing into one another, vocals buried just enough to make you lean in uncomfortably close. There’s no polish, no pretense, just authenticity carved straight from the nerve.

“Oltre la Soglia” stretches into dissonant, cinematic territory, where silence and noise battle for dominance, before the monstrous 15 minute closer “Opera al Nero” drags you into the abyss for good. It’s overwhelming, hypnotic, and genuinely unsettling, the kind of track that makes you forget to breathe.

Even the artwork tells the story, a dead magpie, a symbol of fidelity and misfortune. It’s a statement of grief and inevitability, a fitting emblem for an album so drenched in decay yet alive with purpose.

Melena isn’t here to comfort you. It’s here to fkn consume you. Bertani has crafted something that doesn’t just flirt with despair, it marries it, smashes the champagne bottle, and watches the blood run. Haunting, honest, and beautifully cruel, Melena is Lucynine’s most devastating work yet