Bloody Fury CD Review

Cinema

By Massimo Privitera

 

Bloody Fury

Label Kronos Records

Composers: Susan DiBona & Salvatore Sangiovanni

Id. – 2022

Tracks: 23

Listening time: 28 minutes, 17seconds

Director Jordan Inconstant films a short film (trailer) paying tribute to our spaghetti western ghettos (what a derogatory nomenclature the Americans gave us at the time, envious of the enormous success of Leonian films and beyond), which tells of a Wild West in which the fur trade rages and in which Bloody Fury, one of the last red wolves, decides to avenge (classic plot of the Wild West) his murdered family. But the Is revenge the best solution to find the way to redemption? With Susan DiBona & Salvatore Sangiovanni

The short, a mix of live action with animation, gore-filled special effects and prostrate make-up, is a grand guignolesque divertissement with a colorful cast of well-known Anglo-American actors and character actors (James Phelps, Fred Weasley from the Harry Potter saga, Lee Arenberg directly from the Pirates of the Caribbean saga, Bill Nighy from Love Actually, Harry Potter and Pirates of the Caribbean, etc. etc. etc.) with music by the super-talented duo Susan DiBona & Salvatore Sangiovanni, whom we have greatly admired for many years now, performed (strings only) by the Rome Film Orchestra, piano by Sangiovanni, various flutes and tenor part, as well as orchestral direction, by DiBona, trumpet and flugelhorn by Luigi Paese and additional guitars by Lukas Huber. Of course, the opening track that takes its title from the short is a blatant homage to Ennio Morricone (“Bloody Fury”) with plenty of lyrical vocals, modern rock electric guitar and orchestral cavalcade in tow. “Shot On Sad Hill” is a tense, mysterious track, with pan flute and dripping percussion in the background on trembling strings and impetuous winds. “Chop Chop” takes up the Morricone theme (but also very much in the style of Francesco De Masi) with its symphonic-choral-epic ride to the rescue. “Steampunk Taser” is scary music with windy synth effects. “Red Gloaming” is a very short piece for deguellizing solo trumpet. As for “Steampunk Taser” also “Dark Memories” has the same mysterious air. “Bloody’s Conscience” has a grotesque mickeymousing gait like Tom & Jerry. Metal rock guitar on incessantly tempo drums for the dirty track “Slow Motion Renegades”. “Buffalo Rag Nefarious” is a saloon number with dark atmospheric intrusions to interrupt the ballad, because the villain is behind. “Bloody Breaks Free” begins darkly with electric guitar, ostinato strings and dark synthetic effects and then becomes a string crescendo that is suddenly cut off. An upbeat metal rock ride in “Big Saloon Fight” where the main theme takes on dirty, frenetic and obsessive folk values. Dark new age atmosphere for “Before the Showdown”, where the electric guitar emulates the trumpet of duels in the sun typical of westerns. “A Slice of Revenge” starts with the Herrmannian cluster a la Psycho to calm down enigmatically. Mocking Mickeymousing in “The Moral of the Story” with a bell in counterpoint. Country Old Wild West in “Beyond the Sunset” that thunders with an epic orchestra at the end. Tenorously legendary from a vintage western of our home “His Name Is Bloody Fury (Reprise)”, as solemnly heroic is “The Wolf The Legend (End Titles)” that closes the short film as it is right to do musically in this topical genre. “Siamo anche arrivato in tre” seems like a slow mocking tarantella. “Little Wolf Dancing” is a piece for soaring and dancing strings with solo flugelhorn in contralto, very much in the style of Jerome Moross from Il grande paese. In typical saloon ragtime tempo the very pleasant “Buffalo Rag (Full Version)” (the longest piece on the album: 4’00”) and “Buffalo Shuffle” for solo piano. “Notturno per un piccolo lupetto” and the “Instrumental” variant that closes the CD they are the compositional gem of the soundtrack, with the leitmotif in a meditative version that is both magniloquent and nostalgic at the same time, in which the theme approaches in its emphatic nuance Joe Hisaishi and Patrick Doyle, with its slow and majestic advance at the same time, sung by the beautiful, longed-for and intense voice of DiBona praising the sacredness of the story.