In a world of small hyenas, the afterhours are more alive than ever

The tour set up this summer to celebrate The twenty years of “ballads for small hyenas”, which is surprisingly grinding thousands and thousands of tickets throughout Italy, is anything but a mere operation nostalgiasomething dusty or museum. It seems paradoxical to say it, but Today’s Afterhours, which are then those of “Yesterday”given that Manuel Agnelli wanted by his side The original band who worked on that historic album, they are more alive than ever. And in Genoa, on the stage of the Balena Festival, in one of the very first dates of the tour, always open by the groups of the fresh meat project, they showed it in front of over 2,000 people, setting up An energetic, contemptuous, very playing live, without selfishness and personalisms. A bandwidth. It was since 2018 that the afterhours luminous logo did not illuminate a stage.

There is a double need to make the Ligurian date magical, and in general these new appointments: on the one hand there is a heterogeneous audience at the age of age, Obviously hungry for rock music that leaves the signs on the skin, that it makes it vibrate, on the other, that of a newly found formationthat Agnelli wanted by his side precisely because he perceived the profound desire to get involved for real. He did not look for shifts, but musicians who put body and soul in this adventure, who is much more than a re -enactment. Andrea Viti (bass), Dario Ciffo (violin, guitar), Giorgio Prette (drums) and Giacomo Rossetti (guitar, keyboards, percussion) at the moment are the right travel companions. Together they form a unique, granite block. The first part of the live, with a stage from which five ledwalls appear with evocative visuals, It is entirely dedicated to “ballads for small hyenas”, a symbol disc: the album, as Agnelli has repeatedly explained, has been “son of a precise period” and turns out to be musically very different from the glorious predecessor “What is not there”.

It is darker, more reactive and above all blackwith the rhythm that finds its peak in pieces like “The white widow”. Then comes the first detachment with the interpretation of “The song of Marinella” by Fabrizio De André: the applause of the Genoese, always severe in front of the covers of Faber, in this case they are worth double. From here the concert lives a wonderful derailment: they arrive in sequence, like cannon, “Strategies”, “Germi”, “let me lick the adrenaline”, “goddess”, “the truth I remembered” and “evil of honey”among the most powerful pieces of the After discography. Lamb between one piece and the other Ghigna: “Do you want a ballad? No, it’s not the historical period”. The public jumps, he wags, the frontman feeds the pogo Asking to form a circle, throwing gasoline on the fire. It is a clash between cathartic, sweaty, true cathartic bodies. The air becomes electric and the energy overflows: several fans historically fond of the Milanese band, at the end of the performance, will describe this part as one of the most beautiful and engaging Never lived in a Live branded after.

Continue with classiconi, From “What is not there” to “It is not forever”, as soon as it became a gold album twenty -six years after its release. Agnelli also finds time, escaping rhetoric, sides and flags, to remember the tragedy that is being consumed in Palestineasking for greater commitment to get to a “cease the fire”. Then part “Padania” That in some verses it is as painful as revealed: “Being part of a love even if it is fake badly, to be part of the story even the most cruel. Free from the faith and finally fall. So much is smart more than us, this nothing, this nothing”. If it is true that “you have not come out alive since the 1980s”, today’s after are certainly demonstrating that they have been released in excellent health, and perhaps even resurrected, since the 2000s. We do not know if these will be the After of the future, but they are certainly among the best after that can reserve the present.

Ladder:
The thin white line
Ballad for my little hyena
The most important is the end
There are many ways
The white widow
Fresh meat
Bad powder
Who knows how it is
Judah’s blood
Andrea’s birthday
Marinella’s song (cover by Fabrizio De André)
Strategies
Germs
Let me lick the adrenaline
Goddess
The truth I remembered
Evil of honey
What is not there
You have not come out alive from the 80s
Padania
Bye bye bombay
It is not forever
I want a wonderful skin