Lento - Fourth album review

Italian doom instrumentalists Lento spent their first three records honing their craft, culminating in their most cohesive vision yet, their aptly titled fourth album. Thankfully the songwriting on offer is more imaginative than the title, its 10 tracks combining to create an overarching cinematic journey. The opening salvo of A Penchant For Persistency and Some Disinterested Pleasures combine pulsating grooves with an uncomfortably fuzz-drenched chaos, before the soothing, atmospheric desolation of Undisplaceable Or A Hostile Levity, a formula from herein repeated: sparse ambience generating uneasy calm before the next track crushes your repose, and skull. Sometimes it’s to the record’s detriment. Just as you begin to feel something, the sentiment is destroyed. Perhaps that’s the point. Equal parts bombast and introspection, the narrative implicit within Fourth is laudable, taking you on an epic journey through your own imagination.