I dream of the Theater of Horrors in Sanremo, a nightmare for many

The news of the reunion of Theater of Horrorscomplete with an attached tour “Never say never”warmed the hearts of many fans. The band of Pierpaolo Capovilla, Gionata Mirai, Giulio Ragno Favero and Francesco Valenteembodied one of the last gasps of an Italian rock that was anything but accommodating, but rather challenging towards the public. Anyone who has been, at least once, to one of their concerts, always packed with people, knows: their songs have always been “dangerous”feverish, never tamed, written to make the brain and body move, not to reassure. In essence: the opposite of a lot of the music circulating today. Hence a crazy suggestion, a hope, a utopia.

A dream for some, a nightmare for others: given that the tour will start at the end of February 2025, why doesn’t the Teatro degli Orrori try to play the Sanremo Festival card by taking on the role of the vampire who enters the sacred place of the Italian song? A storming of the Bastille. A reckless participation with a song far from that planet, a journey to the Pillars of Hercules of music. They have done it with credibility, over the years, the Afterhours (in the compilation “The real country” launched for the occasion by the band there was also the Teatro degli Orrori with the piece “Refusenik”) and the Zen Circus. It would be wonderful and fun to see the expressions and reactions of the tanned gentlemen in tuxedos and the rouged ladies in the front rows of the Ariston, in front of a performance by that Venetian devil of Capovilla. Bringing the Theater of Horrors into the most famous theater in Italy, without taking prisoners. The Ariston today is certainly one of the places, apparently, most distant from the history of the band.

Capovilla has repeatedly attacked the mainstream, “shitty music” and certain dynamics of the industry, without even sparing Maneskin (and whoever discovered them, namely Manuel Agnelli) who won the Festival in 2021. But “in this community so industrious, opulent and vain never say never, it’s about survival”, they sing in “Mai dire mai”, a song which also offers the title to the reunion tour. So let them enter those mechanisms with gritted teeth, demonstrating that there is life elsewhere. If I return to the scene it must be, ten years after my farewell, then it must be a kamikaze, with a bangwith perhaps new rebellious songs ready to echo everywhere, even at the Ariston. Why not? Also because the Theatre, in its history, has demonstrated its ability to write excellent pieces: on that stage with a song as “Tom’s song”, one of the songwriting gems written by the groupdedicated to Tom Dreyer, Capovilla’s friend who died in a car accident, would and will leave their mark.

Own “Of the empire of darkness”, the album from which “Tom’s song” is taken, their first cry, it is certainly one of the seminal albums of that ferment of the early 2000s that characterized the independent scene. Between visceral screams, Carmelo Bene-style declamations and poetry, also bothering Céline and Baudelairethe project indelibly marked the sounds and artistic path of the group. The album deals with the loss of identity and values, the difficulty of living in an arid world devoid of empathy, with cynical bitterness and total disenchantment, but it does not lack the strength of the purest feelings. After that first jewel they arrived “In cold blood” of 2009, their album par excellence, “Brave New World” of 2012, the most open album that allowed the group to multiply its audience, and the homonymous “The Theater of Horrors” of 2015 with which they attempted, without completely succeeding, to return to the noise focus of their origins. We don’t know what 2025 holds for the Theatre, but their participation in the Festival would be as unpredictable as it is revolutionary: a “Carramatorock” in the temple.