IL FUOCO SOTTO LA CENERE

The three written reviews before mine need to be commended. In fact it's a little embarrassing giving my brief opinion after reading those. I learned some stuff from those reviews, and it helps having some Italian speakers on here. For example the cover art is meaningful for those in the know. A historical site with fires rising on the cover art reflect the wild fires that went through that area the year before this album was released. And "fire" is a theme here. The album's title means "fire under the ashes". And they use the word "fire" in different ways with each track pretty much.

This is the album to get by this band. I just realized a few days ago that they have released an album in 2023 that I haven't heard, but of the three I own this is easily the best. There's some lineup changes on this one with two of the three guitarists leaving. They replaced one and brought in a second keyboardist giving some much needed balance to their sound. The variety of keyboards helps a lot in my opinion. Also we have three veteran guests helping out, each on one track only. NUOVA IDEA's drummer and singer/keyboardist both help on track six with those skills, and we get the singer from IL ROVESCIO DELLA MEDAGLIA on track three.

I feel like they improved on just about everything here. The inconsistency is pretty much gone, and really it's only that sixth track that I still can't get into. I spent a week with this over five years ago, and have been spinning this over the last few days to reacquaint, and that song is just different from the rest, but not a good different. My top three are tracks 2 to 4 but the self titled opener is also quite good meaning this album starts off amazingly well.

This 2017 release at under 50 minutes is a feel good album, with emotion, and a really good Italian singer to boot. Highly recommended!