Look at the track titles: Devoto, Sotterfugio, Multiverso, Distratto da me, Eterno ritorno, Più uguale, Transizione, Autore del futuro, Figli, Quattro piccole mani. Ten of them, and not one is in Latin. On Cinque, four of the eight were. The band who were famous for singing in a dead language have quietly stopped, and one Italian reviewer notes only that the transition was less traumatic than it sounds, because the words still sit properly in the music. After eight years away, that is what they came back with.

The short version

Devoto is the sixth Deus Ex Machina album, released on 24 June 2016 on Cuneiform, their third for the label, eight years after Imparis. Ten tracks. Alberto Piras sings; Mauro Collina plays guitars; Luigi Ricciardiello, the band’s original keyboard player, is back on organ, piano and synths after two decades away; Alessandro Bonetti plays violin; Alessandro Porreca plays bass; Claudio Trotta plays drums. Luigi Savino guests and arranged; there are baritone and alto saxophones and a trumpet. Every song is credited to Albauro Colliras, which is Alberto Piras and Mauro Collina fused into one name.

Eight years

Fabrizio Puglisi left in 2008 and the band went quiet. Piras has explained why, and it is worth quoting the shape of it: after Imparis they went through a period of low energy, due in part to Puglisi’s departure, and they had to work out where they wanted to go and whether they were still capable of producing Deus Ex Machina’s music. That is a more honest account than most bands give. Ricciardiello returned in 2010, Piras was back in the fold by 2013, and they spent the next two years writing. They reappeared on a stage in Milan in October 2015 and played ProgDay in North Carolina the following year, to people who had been waiting.

The sound

The balance has shifted: hard rock has moved forward and the specifically progressive component has stepped back, and the band are keen to point out that this was always where they came from. Their progressive rock has always started in classic rock, in Led Zeppelin’s heaviness, in blues and psychedelic jamming, mixed with the unpredictability of Area and PFM. What is new is proportion, not vocabulary. Collina’s riffs are lacerating, Ricciardiello’s keyboard grooves carry real weight, and the writing is more direct and more essential without becoming any less dense. One British reviewer called it the most conventional rock album he had ever heard on Cuneiform, which from that label is a genuinely funny thing to be.

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The songs

Devoto opens at nearly six minutes on the lethal guitar-and-keyboard groove that sets the terms. Sotterfugio is eighty-four seconds. Multiverso and Transizione carry the same direct attack, and Transizione’s climbs and drops are where the band sound most like they are enjoying themselves. Distratto da me runs past seven. Eterno ritorno is short. Più uguale is the long one at ten minutes and the most extended thing here. Autore del futuro and Figli both run around seven. Quattro piccole mani closes at four and a half. The label lists English glosses for every title — Devoted, Subterfuge, Multiverse, More Equal, Author of the Future, Sons, Four Small Hands — which they never had to do when the titles were Latin.

Reception and legacy

All Music called them one of the most extraordinary bands in the entire music universe; All About Jazz simply noted that everyone in Deus Ex Machina is a virtuoso. The band re-emerged from the shadows at thirty-one years into their career and the international circuit was glad to have them. The complication is one an Italian writer put well: praise on that scale is exhilarating and it is also a weight, because whoever has to follow records of that stature carries the expectation with them. That is the honest frame for this album. It is more immediate and more direct than what came before, and whether that reads as focus or retreat depends entirely on what you wanted from them.

The verdict

The way in, if Cinque defeated you. Transizione first, for the drive. Then the title track. Then Più uguale, all ten minutes, which is where the old band is still fully visible. Then Quattro piccole mani. This is the least difficult record Deus Ex Machina have made and it is still harder than most things you will hear this year. A band who spent thirty years being too clever for their own country came back, turned the guitars up, and dropped the dead language on the way.

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