HYPNOSIS

** for music, **** for musicianship = ***

Osage Tribe is (IHMO) one of those italian prog bands to explore after you've explored so many of the essentials in RPI.

Their 1972 "Arrowhead" had glimpses of brilliance but not enough to sustain it or keep my interest going. It reminded me of what "Flea - Topo Uomini" was like. But not nearly as exciting as that album. "Arrowhead" was a combination of hard guitar-laden rock blended with elements of hard-edge progressive.

Anyhow, "Arrowhead" is a "decent" item to have in your RPI collection. Put in the same category as Capitolo 6, Flea, etc.. But maybe not as good.

40+ years later, they're back again. Well mostly. Gone is the original guitar/keyboard player/vocalist. Back though is their original drummer and bassist. Several other musicians (not on their original 1972 album) are with the band including a vocalist who has a raspy voice almost in the same vein (almost but not quite) as Museo Rosenbach's vocalist.

Musically speaking, the album rocks and rocks hard!!! Hard-edge (even borderline metallic) guitars. Drums are heavy. What's cool is a throwback to the old days of the 70's where you would have a 5+ minute drum solo on a Led Zeppelin or ELP album. You get that here too.

Musicianship wise, it's excellent and these guys know how to play their drums, bass, guitars and the lead singer is "biting" with aggressiveness in his vocals. It's energetic and they sound like they were having fun.

That's the good part.

For the other part,

> It's energetic and they sound like they were having fun.

I'm glad they were having fun playing the music. Unfortunately, this is the case where they probably had more fun playing this than the listener who was listening to this (speaking from my self-consumed point of view) . I was disappointed in that this is not a progressive rock album. This is basically 1970's hard rock (with not much in the way of melodies) meets aggressive modern hard-rock with elements of metallic/biting guitars and harsh raspy/bluesy vocals.

What's slightly dissapointing is that there is a rendition of their ArrowHead from the 1972 album . This is probably the best track but not really progressive. Then you have 2 other recycled songs which includes a version of Grand Funks' "We're an American Band" (Imagine that, an italian band singing "We're an American band"). Not bad but the original by Grand Funk is better. Same with the Blind Faith song "Can't find my way home" that they sing. Ok. It's nice they pay homage but I prefer the originals by the original artist.

The remaining songs left over are songs I've listened to numerous times over and over and still can't really remember anything about them from the melodies and guitar solos. Not much in the way of melodies. The remaining songs almost had that "garage band" kind of thing going. Like a "jam session" for 30 minutes.

I was hoping after a 40 year absence, they would have returned with a progressive album. To my ears, this is a hard rock album with a mix of modern hard-rock along with a little bit of 70's hard-edge hard rock (think the hardest rock guitars of Ricordi Di Infanzia or Procession but without any of the melodies). Another comparison I can make is for anyone familar with Rovescio Della Medaglia's "La Bibbia" album. That album is nothing at all like Contaminaiton. La Bibbla is more of an experimentation with distorted guitars and vocals that are out of key.

But I have to say, these guys rock hard. The album is even more "rocking" than ArrowHead. To me this is not good as I'm searching for a progressive sound.

So if you're thinking you thought "ArrowHead" was "ok" but you were hoping for more progressive music and are hoping this one fits the bill, I can venture to guess that you'll be disappointed.

This one is not essential. I do hope they come out with another album soon and focus from a progressive angle. Because they know how to play. This is just an unmemorable album for melodies and progressive-candy(which you won't find any).

Welcome back Osage Tribe. I do hope you'll consider your next album a progressive rock album rather than a pure hard rock album.

Fans of pure hard rock (modern and 70's) will probably enjoy this more than I did. Fans expecting anything progressive may be severely disappointed.

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