LA BIBBIA

It was disheartening upon finding that this is [currently] the only album available to me by this otherwise beloved Italian Prog band(?). But I move on... especially seeing it's just 33 minutes long. Thank you very much then-soon-to-be-obsolete album-length standards of the previous decade! Their debut album, La Bibbia (Italian for, as it will make sense shortly, "The Bible"!), was released 1971, the same year as Fragile, Nursery Cryme, Pawn Hearts, Aqualung and the Yes Album, just to name the top 5 here (I could have continued just as excitedly with a good many more). I'm curious how this will fare in comparison haha.

We begin with the spacy static of "Il Nulla" ("Nothingness" or "The Void"). It feeds back into harshness and then individual notes and twangs. This really is very much of the time, to say the least. This goes on until the first chord is struck at about the third minute. Space Rock of the 3+ years prior aside, I wonder where they were coming from here. It's a mostly anticlimactic 5 minutes. Then those final chords prepare us for "La Creazione" ("The Creation", of course; a great band by the way), immediately to my ears Black Sabbath-esque. It can be noted that this is produced... less than satisfactorily... It's not terrible, but still. As it's like that classic Heavy Metal, it really is a solid primary riff. Vocals are strong and prominent. And like Black Sabbath, for instance, everyone is working very well together (the bass sticks out most). It mostly falls away to a vocal group. It's a good concept: A solid Heavy Prog endeavor. "La Creazione" rides naturally into the next, the rockin' "L'ammonimento" ("The Warning"; I assume about sin and the curse), the first track that really feels me gettin' pulled on in. Again, Riff Central! Really though, some solid early Prog here.

"Sodoma E Gomorra" ("Sodom and Gomorra") is frankly pretty standard oldschool Heavy Metal, with a hard Blues/Acid Rock slant. Not much else to say. So much for the ancient capitals of sin and symbols of God's wrath... This is juxtaposed with the 10-minute mini-epic "Il Giudizio" ("The Judgment"), rung in with a gong and singular tom roll. This certainly has more going on. The reverb'd out riff starting around minute 2 is familiar, but well hard to place. The vocals are strong, the performances are convincing, etc. Some of the riffs in here (not the first time on this album), also remind of British-German contemporaries Nektar, they themselves not afraid of the Harder things in life. The thing is, even when they're at their strongest and most interesting here, there could either have been more that could have been done (to my ears) or they're trying to be someone else (and hey, I acknowledge that form flattery, for sure).

It all ends seemingly as it all began with "Il Diluvio" ("The Flood"). Static and crashing and feedback. I guess this is supposed to feel apocalyptic. I mean, I suppose they succeeded in that. It's still not all that great haha. Much like this album.

True Rate: 2.5/5.0