Although not a huge fan of themed and ‘gimmick’ music projects they do occasionally hit the right target and I had a big grin on my face the second Napoli Violenta hijacked my inbox. Much the same way as labelmates Fulci play tribute to the late great Italian auteur Lucio, this lot take the sub-genre of Poliziottesco hostage and swathe a bloody grinding furrow for the films which started appearing from the late 60’s through to the mid 80’s. These Italian crime movies featured the ruthless underworld thugs along with the police procedural bastards who often worked equally outside the law to bring them down. Not well represented in the UK even during the video boom era these were hard to see here even on nth generation bootlegs and I think the first couple I managed to watch included Fulci’s Contraband aka The Smuggler (1980) and Enzo G. Castellari’s The Heroin Busters (1977). All that has changed now and the last year particularly has seen a flood of these getting hi-def releases here courtesy of labels like Arrow Films, 88 Films and Fractured Visions. Indeed, I have a stack here and feel guilty not having had the time to review but am certainly buying them all; Umberto Lenzi’s Free Hand For A Tough Cop (1976) being the latest on pre-order. So welcome to the Years Of Lead and the tough streets where assassinations and market street bombs were commonplace, where the likes of Thomas Milian and Maurizio Merli traded blows and bullets on screen (and sometimes off it as well). These are films that make our own Sweeny and The Professionals look like Dixon Of Dock Green
Translating it into music we have a balaclava clad anonymous quartet going down what is said to be the grind route and knocking out 16 songs in a hair-trigger of just under the half hour mark. Taking us into ‘Grind Rehab’ we have hard fisted thumping and rousing melody that is catchy and impetuous, guaranteed to have you singing along to the chorus without any necessary subtitles. Its all blunter than a snub-nosed bullet and full of gusto and bluff a bit like a car screeching up and bundling hostage up after a back robbery goes totally wrong. Exactly what the first of several samples sounds like actually. You can try and guess them but a snatch of music here gives the first away as being from Sergio Martino’s Silent Action (1975).
You couldn’t really call this a total grind on getting to songs such as La Crime Napulitane which has some hardcore and even street punk swagger about it along with that aforementioned catchiness, which totally gets you right between the eyes. ‘I Don’t Need Sobriety’ is a number that I hope the band got a bottle of J&B Whiskey each for doing. It’s totally frantic and bound to result in a hangover in the morning. Song titles may have you groaning but seriously ‘No Woman No Grind’ isn’t a bad one at all as it’s stuck in plainclothes out on the street as a lure for a savage prostitute killer after they inadvertently witnessed too much. I’m sure that’s an actual movie theme tune lurking in it too. With the tracks being short and sweet, only one hitting the 3-minute mark, naturally if you take your ear off the ball it will be cut off and handed back to you and miss out on the moped ramraid (how things haven’t changed) of ‘Diamonds And Crust. ‘Torso’ tosses up a bit of Giallo I guess as well as brutal death and the oddly entitled ‘6ore 6ore 6rlz’ is more Razorback back catalogue causing mayhem with a scalpel. One thing that is guaranteed is the familiarity of ‘Breaking The Law On My Back’ let’s just say the Priests were not always the good guys in these films.
So yeah, its fair to say without the theme behind it this one could have easily gone AWOL and slipped the net, finding itself hung in its cell with a rope around its neck rather than snitching, but… It’s a lot of fun and if you love the films, you are gonna want to shoot first and die later. The cheeky logo and glorious artwork cap the package up nicely before boxing it up and burying it deep, capeesh?
(7.5/10 Pete Woods)
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