The Pines of Rome is a slowcore band from Providence, Rhode Island, who've been exploring the frontiers of Cosmic American Music on and off for the past 25 years, dialing down the tempo and turning up the volume to create tidal walls of sound that surge and break like the turbulent Atlantic waves that batter the shores of the smallest state in the Union. "The Unstruck Bell" is the newest offering from John Kolodij (guitar), Matthew Derby (guitar/vocals), and Rick Prior (drums) since playing their last show over 20 years ago. Recorded by Seth Manchester at Machines With Magnets, it is the result of a year of unbridled creativity for the band during an era of unprecedented crisis. "If you think about a bell as an alarm, and all of its tolls are stored as potential energy in its atoms...that just feels like the time we're living through right now," Derby says of the album. It is a record of caution and hope, a hymn for the future that contains the band's strongest-ever work.
