DEDICATO A FRAZZ

Dedicato a Frazz is a very strong effort from the one-shot band Semiramis. The guitar is definitely the strongest instrument here, and it really is hard to believe that the guitarist was only 16 at the time! I'm, well, older than that and this guy puts me to shame in terms of guitar playing. At the same time, listening to this album, one can almost detect the younger age of the band members; this leads me to my biggest qualm about the album: lack of any sort of subtlety. EVERY single song on this album is in your face, loud, fast, heavy prog without any sort of breathing room. Now, with that said, these guys are very good at just that. You will know right from the first track that there is no beating around the bush with these songs.

La bottega del rigattiere is a great, strong opener with some nice repeating, heavy guitar licks which eventually moves into a slightly more mellow part (not pastoral or anything). This brings up another staple of this album, and that is the repeating guitar riffs, licks, call them what you like. They are always heavy and fast and sound great, but when you have them in every song, it gets a little old by the last track. The next track, Luna Park, is actually the most restrained song in my opinion with very nice guitar work again. About the keyboards, they are nice, but not great. There is a lot of eminent in use here and maybe some Moog (not sure) but not much variation. Uno zoo di vetro has the heaviest guitar passage of all the tracks and this I love. After the first section of the song it moves into a section that sounds like a shortened version of the last 9 minutes of King Crimson's Moonchild. There is basically a lot a vibraphone here that lasts for just about as long as it should. Speaking of vibraphone, there is a lot of it in this album, but almost too much (can you see the reoccuring theme here).

Next up is the almost completely instrumental Per un strada affolata which moves very rapidly between different musical ideas that are all fast paced and some being very heavy (insert heavy guitar licks). This one is another favorite of mine. Dietro una porta di carta is the track that you can listen to here, and I would say that the second section of the song is more representative of what you will find on this album. The first section which is more slow paced with eminent and lighter guitar is ok, but the second section really shines. Frazz and Clown are both good tracks as well, but I don't have much else to say about them that I haven't already said about the rest of the album.

After all is said and done, I do like this album but have to be in the mood to listen to it. I think that the immaturity of the composers does show through sometimes with the excessive repeating of musical ideas and the general formula for each song (lots of eminent, heavy guitar riffs, fast tempo changes, etc.). Each song sounds different but the same as well. I would like to mention that the singing is very dramatic and very enjoyable. The drumming ranges from ok to moments of greatness. Words I would use to describe this album are insane, diabolical, heavy, turbulent, and breakneck. If you are into the Italian scene, then you would do yourself right by picking this one up.

P.S. Sorry, I don't know a word of Italian so I can't comment on the lyrics, but the emotion and insanity of the singing fits in perfectly with the music.