Six years after “Ultima Necat” (2013), Ventura returns with a fourth album, “Ad Matres”, on Vitesse Records. A long wait worth every second. Ten instant hits full of discomfort from which, despite everything, rises a silty light.
2013, Ventura lays everyone down on an explosive “Exquisite & Subtle” closing its third album. Its title “Ultima Necat” (The last one kills) sounds like too real. Ventura disappears and plunges everyone into silence.
2019, six years later. Some emerging guitar notes, a wandering bass, drums hanging around… then “Acetone” blows up. Ventura is back. In all the darkness, despair … and light that characterizes the band. That one light that sticks to Ventura tirelessly since their first “Pa Capona” (2006) and which kept on rising through a dark, tormented alt rock taken from Dinosaur Jr, Failure and the Wedding Present. No cheating, no makeup, this fourth album is nothing less than Diego Göhring (bass), Grégoire Quartier (drums) and Philippe Henchoz (guitar, vocals) reuniting to be Ventura on ten new tracks.
Nothing has changed. But again, who doubt it? “To Suffer”, “Void”, “I’m Afraid”; Philippe Henchoz has not found peace yet and discomfort is palpable. The energetic “Void” and “Revenge” won’t do; languor andaffliction gangrene an album which, despite the long years of gestation, smells urgency and bitterness. A glacial feeling served with care by a rough production by Serge Moratel (Knut, Shora, Impure Wilhemina); frontal chords, raw drums, an almost ghostly voice that, put together, fill the emptiness which Ventura knows so well: “I’m void. Self centered and paranoid “(The Void).
An album made of all mournings ? It is at least the of a deceased mother who impacted the writing process “Ad Matres” – a feminized latin locution referring to the world of the dead – and the of a drummer who leftthe band to be replaced by Grégoire Quartier (Cortez). But like a Newton’s cradle, this “Ad Matres” finallysounds like a renewal that strengthen a solid discography and brings Ventura back on stage before it all eventually return to the kingdom of death. And do we. Until then, happy existential dread!
