PALEPOLI

The third album by RPI band Osanna is mind-blowing, to say the least. With sounds ranging from early King Crimson's jazz fusion to some of Jethro Tull's most beautiful folk tunes, it manages to put the listener through a musical journey. There's only three sorry on the album (one of which was a reprise of the opening and under two minutes), with the two main songs being around twenty minutes. The line-up from their last album is the same, with the exception of Luis Bacalov no longer doing the orchestral arrangements. One of the standout players on the album that I would like to mention is Massimo Guarino's drumming talent. A lot of Italian drummers don't get the credit they deserve, and Guarino is a great example, especially with the drum solo near the end. Apart from that, the entire band shines their best on this album and represents Osanna's incredible musicianship.

The album opens with Oro Caldo (Hot Gold in English), the shorter one of the two side long suites. It opens with this quiet and calm atmosphere with the sound of Mediterranean marketplaces in the background. Eventually the quiet marketplaces become loud and fast melodies of experimentations and riffs. It again quickly fades into a more folk dominated composition. This album does a lot of switching between quiet and loud parts, with one of my favorites of these parts being right before and right after the ten minute mark. Anyways, the song expands into another riff section with goes into D'anna and Rustici trading solos that eventually culminates into Vairetti doing a scream, which then fades into another quiet section. After this section is over, it stays at an almost carnival sounding piece for around two minutes before going into the next song, Stanza Città (City Room in English), which is a reprise of the intro and under two minutes. Not much to say about except that I like the backwards talking.

Side two is entirely taken up by Animale Senza Respiro (Breathless Animal in English). It is also my favorite of the three songs on the album. It opens with a more heavy sounding part that repeats over and over until going into another one of those quiet moments. Though instead of it being more folk dominated like Oro Caldo, this song takes a more ambient route and combines the members doing some free improv with ambient music. The power eventually comes back and leads to an almost blues inspired piece that, in my opinion, shares a lot of similarities to Pictures of a City by King Crimson. This is another one of my favorite parts of the album, but somehow Osanna manages to build on this perfection and creates one of the most beautiful folk tunes I have ever heard. Yet somehow Osanna was still not done with the perfection, and it goes into another one of those ambient tracks before blasting some of the most emotionally driven music through an almost heavy prog sound. I've seen the translations of the lyrics, and they definitely match the emotion of this part and the entire album. All the perfection that was building up by this point had its throat cut, and all of it spilled out like Osanna had just exhausted themselves. After another experimental and ambient part, we get a reprise of some of the sections in this song before an incredible drum solo near the end. And finally, after all this perfection Osanna has made in this album, they go back to the beginning of the song, this time with lyrics. This was where I originally thought the album ended, but Osanna puts something close to a hidden track near the end that, in my opinion, sounds a lot similar to Sysyphus Pt. 1.

And after all of that, I was left speechless. This is easily my absolute favorite RPI album, and I wish that Osanna had continued to make this type of music instead of going back to short-form songs. In conclusion, the album is near perfect. Being drenched in Mellotron, heavy riffs, aggressive flute, and emotional structures, it's no wonder this is considered one of Italy's finest masterpieces. This is an absolute essential for prog and RPI, and it shows some of the most talented men of Italy when it came to music. 5/5!