Pitchfork

Italy's the Secret are fascinatingly American. They sing in English, the lingua franca of today's globalized metal and hardcore punk. They sound a lot like Converge, America's most vital hardcore punk band. Americans rent metal from Europeans, but they own hardcore punk. As with any subculture, such nuances are obvious to insiders, but obscure to outsiders. "All that yelling," people complain. "I would like metal except for the vocals." The trick is to stop hearing words in vocals and start hearing sound in them.

As an instrument, Marco Coslovich's voice isn't much. It really is just yelling. But its caustic timbre perfectly tucks into its distorted surroundings. He yells-- and doesn't-- in all the right places. What he yells isn't important; the liner notes print no lyrics (though the band's MySpace does). Instead, when the booklet opens up, it shrouds itself-- daguerreotype grays, Photoshopped whites, somber black on black. The album sounds like this, too.

The Secret's debut, 2004's Luce (Italian for "light"), was relatively brighter. Its framework was angular, metallic hardcore punk, but its sophisticated harmonic sense suggested musical training behind its tattoos. Disintoxication drops most color for a hundred shades of black. Born of "depression, attempted suicides, jail, nervous breakdowns, anti-depressant abuse, and pretty much anything negative you can think about," it's leaner, meaner, and more unshaven than Luce. The recording perfectly captures this, sounding like an incendiary rehearsal. It's similar to Kurt Ballou's sizzlingly electric production for Converge. Guitars are gloriously ragged; one can practically hear the rust in the cymbals. Flamethrower vocals, a beautiful smudge of a layout, sound shaped like an old warhead-- who needs language?

Yet the album precipitates into layers. Rolling drums and bloodstained chords begrime "Intoxication". However, it eventually sheds such sackcloth for a naked, keening dirge. Tritones swarm "Saul", then disappear into an effluent of tunneling drums and sandpaper screams. "Inferno" seizes into a death grip of grim syncopation. The left guitar of "In Limbo" claws like fingernails on arms, while the right one spills scarlet sheets-- my bloody valentine, indeed.

These are but feverish detours, though, en route to a thrilling final four. "Funeral Monolith" earns its name with huge, hulking riffs; "Death to Pigs" drapes darkly jeweled chords over desperate polka beats. In "Kill the Dead", dreamy jangles hover uneasily over a roiling rhythm section. The deliberate accents of "Umea" strip the bombast from Led Zeppelin's "Kashmir", tear out its heart, and fill its skeleton with gravel and despond. A whining melody snakes through the gaping hole in its chest. Coslovich's howl could skin knees; his words are completely unintelligible yet horrifyingly comprehensible.