LA LEGGENDA DELLA GRANDE PORTA

This Italian five piece formation is rooted in 1994 but later the line-changed radically, only two founding members survived. On their website I read this about the music on their debut album entitled La Leggenda Della Grande Porta:

"VIII Strada is a musical workshop where harmony, sounds and words are forged together to create songs whose essential aim is to transmit a state of mind and share emotions with the listener. VIII STRADA is classified as Progressive Rock but it is strongly influenced by the various musical tastes and experience of its members", "An unmistakable symphonic-classical influence mixed with the raw energy of rock create the VIII STRADA sound, enriched by diverse contaminations from worlds, cultures, times and ages apart", and "VIII STRADA's music overcomes the barriers of categorization and, especially when performed live and greater contact is established with the audience, the listener finds it is easily interpreted and emotionally enthralling. Let's rock !!!".

Well, listening to their melodic and accessible music I conclude that VII Strada indeed rocks! To be more specific, in general VIII Strada is scouting the borders between Heavy Progressive and Prog Metal (but fortunately without the usual boring cascades of scale-acrobatics) in an exciting way: very dynamic, powerful, bombastic, lots of shifting moods, breaks and sensational accellarations, powerful Italian vocals with passion and a powerhouse rhythm-section. But the focus is on the sensational guitar work: propulsive riffs and cascades of fiery, howling and blistering solos, what a killer guitar player! His guitar is often in awesome interplay with the sparkling Grand piano, this is VIII Strada their trademark, and I love it! At some moments the band plays more mellow featuring warm acoustic guitar, tender piano and dreamy vocals. Like in the titletrack and Laguna Di Giada, and the short piece Amencer even contains a wonderful duet between tango-like piano and classical guitar.

Although VIII Strada doesn't play at the level of other promising new Italian progrock bands like Il Bacio Delle Medusa and Pandora, this is an exciting CD to check out for the Heavy Prog and Prog Metal fans. And progheads who don't have a problem with harder-edged progrock. Additional: in 2015 VIII Strada released their second effort entitled Babylon.

My rating: 3,5 star.