There are albums that flirt with rebellion, and then there are albums that treat it like a full-time occupation, with no holidays and very poor working conditions. "Vexata Quaestio" by Extrema Ratio clearly belongs to the second category. It doesn’t perform dissent. It metabolizes it, chews it into something abrasive and spits it back with interest.

The title itself hints at an unresolved problem, something historically debated and never settled. The band, a quartet from the Canavese area orbiting Ivrea, doesn’t attempt to solve anything. That would be far too polite. Instead, they stage conflict as a method, drawing from a lineage where Sun Ra’s “organized freedom” collides head-on with the industrial abrasion of Einstürzende Neubauten and the feral urgency of Peter Brötzmann. If that sounds exhausting, it is. Intentionally.

Opening track “die litanie des g.b.” drags the specter of Viennese Actionism into the room, specifically Günter Brus, not as historical reference but as vocal possession. The piece feels less like music and more like a ritual conducted in a language that resents being understood. The comparison to early Neubauten isn’t accidental, but this isn’t homage. It’s closer to an autopsy performed with industrial tools.

“Bitter Absinthe”, featuring Marina Andreeva, spirals into a dub-inflected hallucination where post-punk austerity is refracted through Soviet grayscale. The ghost of It's Hard to Be a God lingers in the background, not visually but atmospherically, as if the track itself had been dragged through mud and memory. The use of Marina Tsvetaeva’s final words doesn’t elevate the piece. It destabilizes it, stripping away any safe distance between listener and subject.

With “La recherche d’un impossible,” the band briefly assembles something resembling a groove, thanks in part to Michele Anelli. It doesn’t last. The structure feels like it’s constantly negotiating its own collapse, while the influence of Georges Bataille seeps in as a philosophical infection rather than a literary citation. The result is a tension between propulsion and disintegration that never quite resolves, which seems to be the point.

“The Anatomy of Cruelty” dives into the writings of Antonin Artaud with the subtlety of a controlled explosion. This is not theatrical in any conventional sense. It’s more like the idea of theater after it has been dismantled and repurposed as a weapon. The voice here doesn’t express. It erupts.

“Revolt” is, predictably, not subtle. But it avoids cliché by refusing to organize its anger into anything digestible. Rhythms fracture, metallic textures corrode, and the entire track limps forward like a machine that has decided to keep functioning out of spite.

“Von Protest zum Widerstand”, with Alex Spalck, channels the words of Ulrike Meinhof through interference and obstruction. The piece feels like a transmission constantly on the verge of being cut off, which, given the source material, is less an aesthetic choice and more an ethical one.

Closing track “The Anatomy of Affliction” expands into a two-part structure that brushes against the shadows of Karlheinz Stockhausen and Luigi Nono without settling into academic reverence. The first section dissects, the second descends. Somewhere in between, the idea of catharsis is proposed and then quietly sabotaged.

What holds "Vexata Quaestio" together is not cohesion in any traditional sense, but a relentless commitment to tension. The band’s non-idiomatic approach, filtered through members like xlaidox on voice and trumpet, Alessandro Cartolari on baritone sax, Diego Rosso on drums, and Pier Rot Rosso on electronics, results in a sound that feels perpetually on edge, as if stability were a moral failure.

Released by Wave Guardian Records, the album continues the trajectory set by their debut "A Dangerous Method", but with less interest in defining a sound and more interest in dismantling it.

Majakovskij’s words hover over the entire record like a warning rather than a manifesto. Art as a hammer, not a mirror. It’s a nice slogan until you actually hear what that implies. "Vexata Quaestio" doesn’t just tap at the surface. It swings, repeatedly, without checking what’s left standing.

It’s not pleasant. It’s not supposed to be. And if it occasionally feels like too much, that probably says more about the listener than the music, which remains stubbornly, almost admirably, unconcerned.