INFERNO - THE DIVINE COMEDY, PART 1

FACTS Rating this album is a problem. It's almost too vast to listen it at once and understand it as one big (4CD) album. Therefore, any try to rate/review it is quite difficult. So we'll enter into world of feelings and thoughts, instead of facts. Before we take this journey, let me state few things. This is great source of new RPI/RPI like/other interesting new bands. I also read Inferno (in Czech of course) and have to say that it was hard, but really great. MYTHS And this album really reminds me it. It's really truthful capture of these (in modern time, we would say almost LSD-like) imaginations, souls being tortured for sometimes bad things, sometimes just anti-religious (or simply not religious enough) deeds. Vices are here in great numbers, there's also devil (on drawing that was in book, he looked very ridicolous). These tracks are mostly psychedelic (well, let me explain. This isn't psychedelic = space rock, or genre from 60's, it's style of for example keyboards, where they sounds really crazy - even "folky symphonic" Yesterdays here managed to sounds like it. Most of bands/tracks here does sound like that and it's good, as it describes atmosphere of hell very well.). With few exceptions making beacons of hope in all this madness.

5(-), I suppose that this rating would be appropriate. There are few worse songs, but hell, it's more than 4 hours of themed progressive rock, I wasn't expecting everything to be polished and perfect. And feeling I have about it is good. Journey that is really worth.

My pc crashed during my first attempt to write a review of this box. Maybe a sign....

It's probably one of the most ambitious projects in the modern history of music. Of course Wagner alone wrote operas longer than this, but 34 tracks composed and played by 34 different groups/artists for more than 4 hours of music are a big effort, also for the listener. In addition the concept they are about is one of the biggest masterpieces of world's literature.

It makes impossible going track by track, so let's first say something about the poem:

In 13th Century Dante imagined the world after death divided into 3 divine realms: Inferno (we all know about it), Purgatorio halfway, where redeemable sins are cleared up, and Paradiso (Heaven). Each of them is composed of 33 chapters, plus one introductive at the beginning for a total of 100.

Without going in depth, he used the realms to put inside the main characters of History and of his current times to write an allegoric poem which speaks of politics other than theology.

From a progressive point of view the Inferno is made of 4 CDs for more than 4 hours of music.

Of course not all the 34 tracks are of the same level, but the complexity and the dramaticity of the concept gave the artists the possibility to interpret their respective chapters.

On the first CD I've been particularly impressed by the Romanian YESTERDAYS (great voice) and the Italian GREENWALL. They have kept the original text, and let me say that the result (for Italian speaking people) is excellent as their chapter is one of the most movig and famous of the whole poem.

On CD2 I can mention WILLOWGLASS, WICKED MINDS and IL CASTELLO DI ATLANTE. CD3 features excellent contributions of SINKADUS, OZONE LAYER and ADVENT (I would have expected something more by NOTABENE.

CD4 is darker, but we are in the deepest parts of hell... The string arrangement of the Spanish RAIMUNDO RODULFO is fantastic. DE ROSSI e BORDINI are typical RPI and SIMON SAYS make a great closure to this first "cantica".

What to say...4 hours of progressive music about one of the biggest concepts that can be imagined. It can't have less than 5 stars.

Another great Colossus-Musea Records production of multiple artists contributing songs to a common theme, this time Part One of Dante Aligheri's The Divine Comedy. While I do not like this album as well as either Kalevala: A Finnish Progressive Rock Epic, or my favorite (and one of my favorite albums of all-time), Odyssey: The Greatest Tale, there is a lot of great music here. My favorites include the contributions of FLAMBOROUGH HEAD, IL CASTELLO DI ATLANTE, and NEXUS. I also quite enjoy the songs by BRITGHTEYE BISON, GARAMOND, VIIMA, and WILLOWGLASS. The remaining 27 songs are, IMHO, just average?nothing to write home about.