IN THE BLUE HOUR.

Pronto…

Psyche-rockers Uncle Acid & The Deadbeats have remained one of the most interesting and mysterious projects to come out of the rock/metal scene in quite some time. Their music is consumed like a creeping spider making its way through their contemporaries of today, leaving many of them tangled behind in a forgotten, meaningless web. Meaning that, Uncle Acid do not give a fuck about playing to what people expect out of them, nor do they fold to any trends or algorithms that control the music scenes. We all know the copycats are just as rampant in the underground as much as the mainstream.

Just when you think the band has carved a perfect path in the ’70s biker metal, Sabbath-worshipping realm, these creeps return with vengeance after six years, dropping a new masterpiece titled “Nell’ Ora Blu”, which sounds like nothing anyone has heard before. I’ve sung their praises with every album but I don’t think it’s too early to confirm this latest one is their crowning achievement.

The record pays direct homage to Italian giallo slashers and and the Poliziotteschi crime/action films of the 60s and 70s. Now if that was just it, and they continued on their path of psychedelic-doom metal with a loose story to piece the album together, most fans including myself would probably be fine with that. However, they’ve done so much more. For the first time the band develops a full fledged, conceptual story from start to finish, complete with painstaking details like time period instrumentation, heavy dosages of atmosphere, synthesizers galore and dialogue from classic Italian actors such as Franco Nero and Edwige Fenech. The story is set in 1970s Italy and these tracks flow seamlessly with creepy grace from one track to the next.

Each of Uncle Acid’s previous albums are brilliant concepts in their own right, whether it was hunting witches in 1600s in Blood Lust (2011), joining a hippie-death-cult in Mind Control (2013), stalking London’s murderous streets in The Night Creeper (2015) or a post-apocalyptic dystopia in Wasteland (2018) — but I firmly believe Nell’ Ora Blu is the album they’ve wanted to make all along.

The result is the sort of thing that makes the hairs on my arm stand up. The level of creativity and precise authenticity is downright stunning. You can hear how much work Uncle Acid & The Deadbeats poured into this project. It’s a greatness that we aren’t lucky enough to hear very often.

These songs and instrumentals are beyond a “soundtrack to a non-existent movie” which we’ve seen many artists do in the past and sometimes feels like novelty. Nell’ Ora Blu is a meticulously executed audio story of terror — or an imaginary movie. The band has done a remarkable job drifting the listener away to a grainy old film by use of synths, guitars, horns, organs, harmonious “oohs” and “ahhs” and dramatic Italian conversation that tells the story of a group of vigilantes who plan on murdering a corrupt city official named Giovanni Scarano. Uncle Acid himself recently stated “It’s a tribute to 70s Italian cinema. It’s a story about people who decide to take the law into their own hands. Things get pretty dark straight away and of course, it doesn’t end well for anyone.” 

While I don’t speak Italian, there is an official synopsis in English that you can follow along with which was written by Uncle Acid himself. It’s a fun way to hear the album and I highly recommend doing this.

The surprises around every dark corner of this album are masterful. Audio candy like footsteps, rotary phones ringing and the sharpening of knives add brilliantly to the atmosphere. The influence of 1970s Italian horror soundtrack legends Goblin and Fabio Frizzi is clearly present but it’s when the album takes a detour into Spaghetti western territory, or suddenly a jazzy-noir passage rolls in, which completely transports you inside the cinephile mind of Uncle Acid. I can practically see myself roaming the 5:00 a.m. blue hour-soaked streets of the city.

Even though Uncle T has been a fan of Uncle A since the 2011 debut album and have seen the band a number of times live, there’s a million reasons why I feel Nell’ Ora Blu is the band reaching an all-time peak in terms of writing and creativeness.

As much as I cherish the band, I’ve always had this thought where I feel they are at their best when at their weirdest. The best was yet to come…and it’s here at last. This is also an album you need to sit back and consume in one big listening experience. For the short attention span, Spotify skip-skip-skip generation of music fans, this will be too much to take. Think of this album as a Quentin Tarantino movie in terms of the length and the obsessive attention to the love of the genre. It’s a journey. Uncle Acid has clearly done his homework and the man is a true cinephile. He is probably just as much a musician as he is a filmmaker, perhaps just a craft he has yet to hone in on yet.

Nell’ Ora Blu is out on May 10, 2024 on Rise Above. Order here!