THE 7 SAMURAI

This album is sub-titled The Ultimate Epic. I was intrigued by this and since I am quite an epic collector, I decided to dig into this work. I knew already the work from Taproban as well as Tempano.

The first epic from these Seven Samouraï comes from the Italian band Consorzio Acqua Potabile (best known as CAP). The song that they deliver here holds some wonderful fluting and during the harder moments, a deep Tull filiation is felt.

It is maybe a bit lengthy, but the last six minutes are pure enjoyment. Emotive vocal part and a vibrant closing just make you forget about some weaker fragments. This track is all beautiful Italian prog music. And you might know that I quite like it. The violin sound is a fantastic add-on to the music proposed by this band. It is my preferred of the three, because few moments are superfluous.

I have catalogued this album into the Italian Symphonic, not only because two of the bands featured are coming out of Italy, but also because the Tempano contribution (even if sung in English) is really close musically to this style even though the long and improvised middle section is not the best moment of music I could have expected. But fortunately, the last five minutes revert the listener to some more conservative music: harmony and fine melody are taking over after these weird breaks.

The Taproban piece was the one I was waiting for the most. I quite liked their three albums and I hoped that this piece of music held most of the promises each of them contained. I have to say that it is only partially true.

While the objective of this combined work was to regroup three epic songs, I'm afraid that this sole objective obsessed each band. This last Taproban is effectively full of loose solo, long improvisations and lacks of substance. The passion of some of their work is not fully represented either.

In all, each respective band performs a decent piece of music; but the whole is not as great as it ought to be. Three stars.