STORIA DI UN ICEBERG

Those musicians were apparently best known as cover bands than really producing their own music but when I listened to the fine "Prologue" I was quite enthusiast: a little peaceful and melodic overture which is followed by a quite symphonic "Il Ladro Romantica". Vocals are fine and in Italian for most of this work.

The feel is quite good after all: nothing to do with some neo-prog clones as one might have feared. "Algebra" plays a soft and melancholic music. There are evident links with "Genesis" of course (the intro of "Verso Il Nulla" is quite similar to the second hald of "After The Ordeal"). But this is not too much bargaining, right?

This was an excellent start, which is seriously compromised by "Claudia": a short jazzy/neo- prog piece which features rather average vocals. Press next to reach "Today Images" which is not a masterpiece either. It starts alright with a fine acoustic guitar play, but these vocals in English are quite dreadful. Only a short and extremely melodic guitar solo is saving the bill.

Now, we have to face a medley of ?"Genesis" songs! It all starts with a poor rendition of "Afterglow", followed by the closing section of "Firth Of Fifth" (the band could have prevented the last few vocal lines?). As the genuine band was used while they were four, "The Musical Box" is represented by its closing section. The vocals are really terrible. Awful.

What is quite unbelievable is that the next tune ("A Prayer") is a total rip off of "Sweet Jane" from the great Lou Reed. The riff if totally stolen and this song is quite out of place on this album. What the hell did this band want to achieve??? I can just pray to reach the end of this masquerade of a track. Only some instrumental passages are OK (like the fine mellotron one). Yes: this band mixed "Sweet Jane" for a while with mellotron to end!

I can't say that the next couple of song are thrilling: why did they feel the need to sing in English? While the lead vocalist was keeping the sweet Italian to express himself, it was quite OK. It is really incomprehensible. The result is far much better with the title track, which sounds like a jewel after these dreadful moments. It is all symphony, poetry, melody. Sweet keyboards, fine acoustic guitar and pleasant sax. Their manager (if any) should have been put in jail IMO!

The band was quite effective during the few tracks sung in Italian but the English tracks (+ the cover) dragged down this album to very low levels. Unfortunately. I knew it was a risky business to be the first one to post a review with some comments.

Fortunately "Russian Suite" is not sung in ? Russian. This long instrumental holds lots of fine parts: piano, electric guitar, violin but the whole is not really interconnected and sounds more as a bunch of "solo" from each member than a true combined effort. Still, the music displayed is very pleasant.

I was quite perplexed while I read the band bio from Lise: "their work ranges in quality from 'ok' to 'so-so' to downright abysmal". She was god damned right!

Two stars thanks to the Italian songs and the instrumental piece.

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