Wrong. 

Apparently this is this Italian band’s second album (along with 4 Ep/splits), and it has to be some off the most of the wall, experimental grindcore/spazz tech metal I’ve ever heard, putting the likes of Lye By Mistake, Dillinger, Psyopus, Brutal Truth, and Cephalic Carnage to shame, while calso ulling from all of them. Throw in a full time baritone saxophone to the mix, and you have a 31-minute trip into some truly bizarre and genre shattering noise. 

And truthfully, some (maybe most) will term this as noise. There’s no real tangible structures or cohesion just a collage of spastic, stuttering, feral screams, discordance, frantic blast beats, caustic squealing riffs, industrial programming and FX, sudden jazzy spurts and all of it laced with a fucking Saxophone. Yes, a saxophone, and its utterly schizophrenic (and borderline grating) use makes the likes of Pan Thy Monium look like John Coltrane. 

Breaking down tracks is rather pointless task as the album is full on typically wacked out 70s Italian horror movie weirdness played via grindcore. The likes of “Nouvelle De Spasticité & Epilepsie”, “Defragmenting Rotunda”, the creepy title track  and the aptly named “Free Non-Jazz Powerviolence Sonata” run the gamut from trippy, dreamy ambience to ear shattering chaos, lurching discordance, and slow burning atmospherics. It’s truly unsettling and unfathomably psychotic at times. And did I mention there’s mother-fucking saxophone squawking along in the background the whole time? The Sax does slow down for the smoky “Biodegradazioni”, but other wise its, it’s a schreeching, skronking, teeth gnashing injection to the already ear shredding cacophony.

Il Secondo Tragico will be a  challenging, mind fuck of a listen, no matter how ardent a metal listener you are. But it’s a great talking piece and novelty album to throw on to get rid of your in-laws.