TWENTY FLYING KINGS

"Twenty Flying Kings" is the fourth studio album by Court, from Varese. It was recorded during several sessions that took place between 2007 and 2012 and finally released in 2012 on the independent label Ma.Ra.Cash Records with the renewed line up featuring Marco Pedrini (vocals), Mosè Nodari (guitars, oboe, recorders, vocals), Jacopo Favrin (bass), Marco Strobel (guitar, mandolin, keyboards) and Francesco Vedani (drums, percussion, keyboards) plus some guests such as Luigi Bonacina (bass), Andrea Balliano (classical guitar), Giandomenico Fraschini (piano) and Andrea Cajelli (percussion). The album summarizes the history of the band, whose roots date back to 1990, and marks a new starting point. In fact, it features four pieces from their early period re-arranged by the new line up, two tracks originally released on the Colossus-Musea themed album "The Divine Comedy Part I - Dante's Inferno" and one previously unreleased track...

The opener "Cries" is a shortened, condensed but not less effective version of a piece from the 1993 debut album "And You'll Follow The Winds' Rush 'till Their Breath Dwells", a heartfelt complaint against war and tyranny. There's no glorious victory that can revive the dead nor heal the ruin left behind by the armies fighting in the name of their whimsical kings...

The following "Anastasius' Epitaph" and "The Great Bear Rising" are linked together and come from Dante's Inferno. Their source of inspiration is the Canto XI of the Divine Comedy that describes the meeting between the sommo poeta and Pope Anastasius II. In a damned place where even spring has a strange smell words like heresy and betrayal hide an obscure meaning...

"Sumptuous Moment" is an extended new version of the wonderful epic from Court's second album "Distances", where the band manage to develop some ideas and showcase great maturity and gusto. It's a visionary celebration of the power of Mother Nature, inspired by the poetry of Emily Dickinson, where "a thunder storm combines the charms of winter and of hell"... Here folk influences and classical flavours are combined with the energy of rock instruments to conjure up a dreamy atmosphere and bring to life wandering shadows lost in the woods under the moon...

The first version of the melancholic "Lovers" was originally released on the debut album and here the band gives new life to the tragic story of a princess that preys night and day for the return of his beloved knight who is gone abroad, over the see, to fight in the name of the his king. When the army comes back without him she jumps down from the tower to fly away and meet her man...

The short, delicate acoustic ballad "Dream Tale" is the only original track and tells of a child who dreams of being a brave knight in a fantastic world full of adventures... It takes to the re-arranged version of another long epic piece from the debut album, "Alviss' Revenge", inspired by Norse Mythology and Nordic sagas. It tells a bloody story of rings and vengeance, kings and Valkyries, robberies and murders and ends an album that is really worth listening to.