“Måneskin are from Rome, a city famous for a thousand things before you get to good rock music. “Can they conquer the world?” asked The New York Times. And Rush!, their first album recorded mainly in English, is absolutely terrible at every conceivable level: vocally grating, lyrically unimaginative, and musically one-dimensional. It is a rock album that sounds worse the louder you play it. (…)

It makes for a sweaty and effortful album that always seeks attention and never commands it. The wildest attempt to justify their status as the alternative to something is “Kool Kids,” where frontman Damiano David adopts a faux British accent to deliver a satirical broadside against “cool kids” that sounds like a Tory version of Mark E. Smith shouting over the Vines.

But this is the strange allure of Måneskin, a band so bad that you can’t listen to their music without thinking that, finally, as a culture, we’ve arrived at some inevitable mass Måneskin event. (…) They are chaos in a vacuum, and we’re left to make sense of a band that sounds like a parody of an early aughts NME cover and whose whole vibe could best be described as Cirque du Soleil: Buckcherry. (…)

Even if you accept the premise that Måneskin are “music freaks” who love “rock,” you’ll be disappointed to learn that nothing else on Rush! gives off that impression. Their primary influence seems to be “Seven Nation Army” chants at a soccer game, followed closely by late-era Red Hot Chili Peppers, followed extensively by nothing. On the unbelievable “Mammamia,” the bass, guitar, and vocals are performed almost entirely in martial unison. It’s a fascinating choice that brings to mind fourth-grade band practice, or migraines.”

(Jeremy D. Larson bei Pitchfork)

Mit Dank an Maik Constantinus!