Italian duo OvO—Stefania Pedretti‘s razor-wire vocals and guitar, Bruno Dorella‘s percussive electronics and drums—have long been sonic saboteurs, dismantling noise rock and avant-doom since 2000. Their eleventh album, Gemma (Artoffact Records, October 3, 2025), arrives as a 25th-anniversary manifesto: a seed bursting through concrete, promising regeneration amid entropy. It’s their boldest fusion yet—industrial grind meets electronic pulse, birthing “new weird life” from elemental chaos.
Opener “Gemma” erupts like a primordial ooze, Pedretti‘s guttural howls slithering over Dorella‘s glitchy rhythms, evoking a crystal forming in toxic sludge. It’s a thesis statement: transformation as confrontation, rejecting stasis for explosive rebirth. From there, the album unfurls as a periodic table of mutation. “Stagno” simmers in swampy drone, heavy with bass throb and feedback squalls, while “Opale” (feat. Lord Spikeheart‘s corrosive guest bark) is pure abrasion—a dance-doom hybrid where electronics whip like flails and Pedretti‘s screams pierce like shrapnel. It’s the standout single, a genre autopsy that leaves noise rock bleeding into electro-metal.
Mid-album gems like “Iridio” rally with queer-feminist fire, lyrics decrying patriarchy over iridescent synth waves and cello swells from Paige A., adding ethereal venom to the assault. “Diamante” glints with crystalline distortion, a nod to sharp-edged resilience, before “Orocromo” descends into golden haze—Dorella‘s programming layering tribal beats under Pedretti‘s incantations. The pulse quickens in “Cobalto,” a “dance doom” juggernaut teased pre-release: cobalt-blue grooves that thump like a heart in rigor mortis, blending EBM throb with sludge riffs for hypnotic propulsion.
Later cuts intensify the weird: “Zolfo” belches sulfurous noise, evoking volcanic rebirth; “Neon” flickers with cyberpunk urgency, guitars slicing through vaporwave haze; “Rame” corrodes into coppery dirge; and closer “Fossile” petrifies the frenzy into echoing fossil— a haunting requiem for what’s shed.
Gemma isn’t polite evolution; it’s violent genesis. OvO alchemize influences from Lightning Bolt‘s frenzy to Throbbing Gristle‘s chill, but infuse it with Italian operatic dread and eco-feminist bite. The production—dense, visceral, 24-bit raw—demands headphones or a void to swallow whole. Flaws? Moments border on sensory overload, but that’s the point: discomfort as catalyst. In a stagnant scene, Gemma regenerates the extreme, a bud of sonic heresy blooming defiant. OvO aren’t just surviving; they’re terraforming. Essential for noise acolytes craving apocalypse with a heartbeat.