This Italian crew create wonderfully unorthodox hardcore on their second album!
Don’t get us wrong – we love it when bands do a great job of channelling the sound of classic punk and hardcore, but ultimately both genres were founded on the spirit of rule-breaking. We’ve never before encountered such a band that sings in their native Italian, so hats off to Milan quintet Aurevoir Sòfia for thumbing their noses at the largely English-language world of hardcore to do exactly that. Well, for most of this record, anyway.
Certainly, ‘Scuola Sòfia’ is good enough to make me wish I’d tried harder with Italian, during my all-too-brief attempt at Duolingo lessons (during the Covid lockdown). It’s a very expressive language, so it suits the music well. The record begins with the title’s track’s air-raid siren of a guitar line, before a gloriously bouncy stop-start riff (think along the lines of ‘Holiday’ by Turnstile) kicks in. An explosive start, for sure.
Indeed, Aurevoir Sòfia share the Baltimore crew’s love of musical experimentation; why not drop a short piano interlude in the middle of a straight-up hardcore punk belter, as they do in ‘Ho Scritto Una Lettera’? Why not adopt a kind of spoken-word style on ‘Comunque Lo Stesso’, which builds gradually from a Cure-esque melodic intro into a noise-laden lament? And as for the acoustic guitar at the start of ‘27’….oooh, you can see the hardcore purists’ faces turning red in your mind’s eye. Hey, it’s their loss.
That said, these guys can rage with the best of them. ‘Copiedicopie’ sees them sounding irritable and restless over barbed-wire guitars and a refrain surely designed to whip any self-respecting pit into action, whilst ‘Cadillac II’ sweeps all before it with some seriously fuzzed-up bass and vocalist Luca D’Aniello sounding increasingly on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Even these aren’t without a few interesting twists, though – you’re never quite sure what the band are going to do next, even within the space of one track, and therein lies much of their appeal.
Overall ‘Scuola Sòfia’ is far too good to be pigeonholed as some kind of musical curiosity; it’s as good a hardcore record as you’re likely to hear all year, made by a band who don’t let their reverence for the genre stop them from putting their own stamp on it. Grazie, gentlemen – and apologies in advance for mangling your mother tongue as we (attempt to) yell along at your gigs.
‘Scuola Sòfia’ is out now via Kick & Snare Productions – check it out via the links below.
- Scuola Sòfia
- Ho Scritto Una Lettera
- Copiedicopie
- Comunque Lo Stesso
- Anything
- Cadillac II
- Senza Far Rumore
- 27
- Prima Di Tornare A Casa
Main Photo Credit: EMANUELA GIURANO
Follow Aurevoir Sòfia on Their Socials:
Need more Punk In Your Life?
Live Review: Au Pairs welcomed back in Arnhem, the Netherlands, after 43 years
On Wednesday, 4 February 2026, UK post-punk legends Au Pairs, joined by Dutch punk veteran Wick Bambix, put on a memorable show in Arnhem!
<div
Album review: Greek punks The Overjoyed release ‘Overjoyed’
Athens, Greece punk rock quartet The Overjoyed have just released their third self-titled studio album. The songs are about subjects like personal struggles, mental health,
Album review: New Found Glory release ‘Listen Up!’
This whole album just screamed at me! So honest and relatable in so many different ways. You can easily sing along and dance to these
Live review: Sweat, Pogo and ‘Filmriss’ – Carnival Chaos at the Sonic Ballroom!
A sold-out Thursday on 12th February in Cologne proves that you don’t need a big stage to create an unforgettable night – just 130 punks,
EP review: LoGOz killer new 4-track, ‘Method is Madness’
Northumbrian melodic punk rock band LoGOz are looking forward to unleashing their brand-new EP ‘Method is Madness’ on 19th February 2026 – and it’s their
Album review: Heart Attack – ‘The Future Is(n’t) Yours’
The band originally formed in 2021, and they deal in hard-edged yet anthemic punk rock with the occasional muscular hardcore twist here and there. Rise
I spend my days teaching English to foreign students, and my evenings attending as many gigs as possible. Raised mainly on a diet of 90s third-wave punk, my tastes have grown to include just about anything from trad ska to thrash metal. The Ramones are my musical gods.
Did you know that we are 100% DIY? We run our own game. No one dictates to us, and no one drives what we can or cannot put on our pages – and this is how we plan to continue!
