...GIUDIZIO AVRAI

A very nice surprise!!

This album came as a surprise to me in many ways. This band is one of my favorite in the RPI genre, but I didn't realize that this album existed until recently. Their first two albums are more along the lines of heavy prog and hard rock power trio with flute, with the thunderous bass of Stefano Urso commanding most of the attention. Then for their masterpiece, their third album Contaminazione, they added keyboardist Franco di Sabbatino. He immediately took a preeminent role in this amazing symphonic album. There are flashes of their first two albums, as well as bursts of flute from Pino Ballarini, but the keyboard and symphony take the lead. The band during this time was famous for their amazing liveshows, featuring quadrophonic sound and coordinated lights--just never seen in RPI bands during this time.

But disaster soon followed. Theft of their expensive equipment seemed to spell the end of the band. Vocalist/flautist Pino Ballarini soon departed, apparently replaced for a brief time by Michele Zarrillo from now defunct Semiramis. (What a show that would be!)

But about three years after that, the band was down to a quartet, with no vocalist. They performed this show in 1976 (some sources say 1975), which is completely different stylistically from their first two heavy albums and from their third symphonic album. This live show is keyboard-dominated as well, but this time the style is spacey atmosphere with a strong rhythm section and jazzy guitar outbursts. About 45 minutes of really fun improv. And despite it being a bootleg recording, the sound is pretty good. The band officially released the album in 1988, on limited run LP only. But you can find the entire album on YouTube. So have at it! Enjoy a slice of RPI history, and imagine what might have been. 3+ stars (Gnosis 10/15)

I didn't quite expect RDM to head in this direction after the classic Contaminazione/Contamination. Apparently they recorded a live demo right before they broke up and for some reason this recording appeared in 1988 as Giudizio Avrai. Not surprisingly the sound quality isn't great but the music is so good I could forgive that. Nothing at all like the classically derived classic of Contaminazione. This is all instrumental space rock with spacy synths, in fact it's hard for me but not to think of a more jammed version of Sensations' Fix. Imagine had this been a proper release recorded in a professional studio and RCA released this shortly after recording, we'd have a space rock masterpiece on our hands. Still we got a great space rock album but without the professional mixing and treatment it deserves. At least I can still hear all the instruments. This was hardly the first time RDM changed their sound. They were exploring psychedelic tinged hard rock on their first two albums, with La Bibbia and Io Come Io before turning to orchestrated classical prog on their landmark Contaminazione. Giudizio Avrai is a wonderful space rock album, despite the audio shortcoming, I can highly recommend, especially if you like Sensations' Fix.

Never thought I'd run into a real vinyl copy of this but ran across one last week. This album is both an oddity but also something any die hard RDM fan should track down. Getting a physical copy might not be that easy as it never came out on CD, and was very limited in its 1988 (some research shows the vinyl stampers say 1981) release. Why should we track this down? It is a very different take on the RDM of Contaminazione fame. Most fans thought they'd expired after their third album, but this release bears witness to where they were at in 1975. First, this album is very different from their previous three albums, with the first two as proto prog heavy guitar rock, the materpiece Contamanazione as intricate keyboard heavy symphonic prog and Giudizio Avrai as....well I guess space rock is the closest you could come. Not the full on furry freak space rock of Hawkwind, but an elegant and classically tinged space rock where most of the album consists of keyboard heavy quartet improvisations with guitar taking mostly a back seat. . Recorded live in 1975 (RDML 75) in front of a smallish audience, the listener might trend towards wistful and sympathetic. The band is jamming improvs and usually hitting the mark in front of a tiny crowd. The once mighty Rovescio Della Medaglia, owners of the largest self contained deafening sound system and light show in all of Italy hamstrung by getting all of their gear (a tractor trailer full) stolen after a show in Rome, effectively bringing the band to an abrupt halt. By 1975, the band was without lead singer Pino Ballarini who had to leave the country for Switzerland to restore some level of sanity, health and calm. The most recent member, Franco di Sabbatino on keys tries to hold everything together, with mostly successful but occasionally mixed results. Some of the jams are on the edge of almost disintegrating right in front of us, reminiscent of Jazz Odyssey from Spinal Tap, but right away they jump into a spirited improv that can take you places you'd never guess. Flickers of themes run briefly through some of the songs on side 2, just a whisper of Contaminazione material pops up a couple of times and disappears just as quickly. Bursts of guitar come and go quickly but the rhythm section ably tries to both follow and lead as necessary. There are no recognizable full songs on here as it is divided into five parts of the same name (giudizio avrai roughly means 'judgement you will have') Sound quality is very good, better than some live albums of the era. Highly recommended for major RDM fans, and for RPI fans, a brief view of a band taking a turn towards space rock just before breaking up-a curiosity rarely seen in Italy. 3.5 stars for RPI folks-a nice addition to a larger RPI collection. A treasure for RDM fans.