That Miastenia is Ovo’s first American full-length release may not be a full-fledged travesty, given that they’ve only released three albums in their native Italy, and that a split with Rollerball was co-released by Oregon’s Torture Music Records. Still, as someone’s grandfather might opine, is it a gosh-darned shame. The Milanese duo, often operating with barebones instrumentation, play rock music that’s simultaneously primal and post-apocalyptic, sometimes unabashedly simple, but never Neanderthal.
Bruno Dorella and Stefania Pendretti formed Ovo in late 2000, and their original output was wholly improvised, typified by their debut, Assassine, issued on the band’s own Bar La Muerte imprint. Very quickly, the duo’s music gained girth, and they worked in what they’ve termed “chaos core,” which combined the speed and intensity of grindcore with the freedom of improvisation. Having later moved on to at least partially composed performance, Ovo’s contemporary attack feels more streamlined, and the band’s songwriting uses powerfully minimal language to make forceful and compelling music. Much of Dorella’s percussion is played out on a floor tom and ride cymbal, with snare added for occasional punctuation. He often plays at an achingly slow pace, with infrequent and unadorned fills, or with a vaguely tribal urgency on the faster (but no more needlessly complex) of the album’s tracks. Pendretti’s guitar is a tortured beast, its tone cutting like a blade dirty with a decade’s worth of grit, grime, and gore. Chords and notes give way to a rhythmic riffing, and like her partner’s percussion, Stefania’s guitar finds its impact in the uncomplicated nature of its sound. Ovo’s vocals, however, supplied by Pendretti, are the group’s most distinctive feature. The diminutive guitarist emits her lyrics in a grimy rasp, at times with an impressive vibrato, though “CoCo” proves her ability to perform suitably through her vocal chords’ clean channel setting as well. It’s the dirty stuff, though, that’s worth the price of admission; the brisk yelps of “Fobs Unite,” and the animal growl of “Mammut” typify Pendretti at her most aggressive, and, not coincidentally, her most arresting.
Their more brutal material may be their forte, but Ovo aren’t one-dimensional, and Miastenia is rife with momentum swings and mood shifts, as pummeling beats and shredded guitar give way to jaunty, even jazzy composition or what amount’s in Ovo’s oeuvre to balladry, while harmonica and piano add to the stripped down instrumentation. It’s not versatility on a grand scale, but one senses that Ovo could likely play their way out of a paper bag any number of ways (hell, the twenty-minute title track proves it), and that Miastenia, which simply punches its way out, is simply the most effective.
