IL GRANDE LABIRINTO

After getting to know this outstanding italian group through their latest CD, the brilliant Petale Di Fuoco, I started to look for their previous works to see what they had brought up before that modern masterpiece of prog. Going backwards on a band´s discography can be a frustating efford, since rarely we get the same thing as their latest arrival. Not so much in the case of Il Grande Labirinto (2003), their sophmore release. Surely this is no match for Petale Di Fuoco, but still it is very good.

All the basic elements are here: excellent musicanship, strong songwriting, tasteful arrangements, terrific singer in the person of Alessandro Corvaglia. He is definitly one of Italy´s best nowadays, at least prog wise: he has a fine voice, very good vocal technique and a very convincing and passionate delivering. However, it is also clear that the band was still a bit green and their writing still needed some ajustments. This is far less accessible than their last CD, but among all the tracks you´ll find very good melodies all around, specially on the strong hooks they have. This time the music is heavier, more obscure and less concise. And the King Crimson influences are much more evident too.

It took me much more time to fully enjoy this CD, but in the end I did. Even if all the experimentation and dark/heavy passages were not exactly my cup of tea, they already had developed a very strong sense of melody, their song structures were never lost to pointless jams or boring noodlings. There are a lot of vintage sounding keyboards (most notably the vast use of the mellotron) and also lots of flute. Not much guitar, though. Again the tracklist is very well balanced, with no real highlights, neither any weak stuff. All the songs have good and not so good parts, but mostly they are highly enjoyable.

Rating: something between 3.5 and 4 stars, really. But I´ll round up to four since their stuff is far superior than a lot of is being made today.

Conclusion: A very good CD from this terrific modern italian band.