Finally here we are!
After the Void Trilogy, which ended with the publication of the third album "Norma Evangelium Tenebris", Noctu slightly changes his approach to his modus operandi, looking for new dynamics to apply to his compositions, leveraging the emotional boost given by the fusion with new musical genres, only apparently far from Funeral Doom.
In addition to the reconfirmed Black Metal and Dark Ambient influences, Noctu enriches its sonic nuances by inserting melodies inspired by Melodic Death Metal and Blues, as well as a powerful noir atmosphere gleaned from the avant-garde Jazz with Dark and Doom hues of bands like Bohren & Der Club Of Gore, Dale Cooper Quartet, Macelleria Mobile di Mezzanotte, etc.
The result is like a cosmic cathedral of sounds that explodes in the air and then falls back onto a decadent urban ground, the theater of the lyrical setting, where an ancient and real Italian story of witch hunts is explained in a dystopian and retrofuturist context with a Art Deco, like in a Hugh Ferriss painting.

Finnicella is a midwife from another era.
A quiet woman who helped many women give birth.
But when, due to a complication, the baby of a wealthy family is born dead, she is accused of being a witch who kills newborns to drink their blood and stay young and strong.
Through false witnesses, misleading evidence is produced that this was not the first time a newborn had died due to the diabolical midwife.
Finnicella is then taken from her home by force and placed in an isolation prison constantly veiled by a guard.
In the 12th century the rules contained in the Canon were included in the Decree of Gratian which, however, in the second part also reported all the texts condemning witchcraft and all the decisions taken in the various Councils against wizards, witches and procurers of abortions, which were generally the prohibition of communion, penances, fines and long periods of fasting on bread and water.
This, which until then was a moderate attitude, changed following the papal bull Super illius specula of John XXII which stigmatized witchcraft by identifying all the facts and phenomena that were to be considered signs of manifest witchcraft, i.e. spells, diabolical pacts and profanations; but already the bull no longer distinguished magic from heresy. At that time, those rites of pagan origin were indicated as magical which, now emptied of religious meaning, were prayers or offerings to unidentified malevolent spirits to propitiate them; the Church ended up identifying malevolent spirits with demons and therefore magic with heresy.
With the bull Summis desiresantes, promulgated by Innocent VII in 1484, it was stated that the crimes of witches were different from those of the past and that they needed to be identified and punished. To this end, two years later, Dominic Heinirich Kramer wrote the Malleus maleficarum the first inquisitorial manual entirely dedicated to witchcraft.
Thus, on 28 June 1424 the witch Finnicella was burned alive on the Piazza del Campidoglio; Thus, the witch hunt that would bloodied all of Europe and ended up in the New World also started from Rome.
But, at the end of the execution, that guard who had assisted Finnicella during her imprisonment wondered, with his face streaked with tears, whether this wickedness could have been avoided.
He wondered if Finnicella was really a witch who had sold her soul to the Devil, or if it was human evil that, in order to fulfill its own sinister ends, did not hesitate to destroy the lives of poor innocents.
But society does not learn, because even today, despite talk of a great evolution of the human race, there are still those who are willing to start new types of witch hunts to satisfy sordid appetites and malevolent purposes.
Therefore, one question continues to plague my mind: Is humanity really worth saving?