TARDO PEDE IN MAGIAM VERSUS

Occult and Satanic references began in rock music as far back as 1967 when The Beatles included the controversial Aleister Crowley on the "Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" album and seemed to give license for other artists to indulge in their wildest, darkest fantasies of turning the most occult sounds and themes into the newly liberated rock music paradigm. By 1969 Coven was performing entire Satanic occult rituals on its debut release and by 1970 Black Widow was heralding the virtue of Lucifer and Satan while Black Sabbath launched an entirely occult themed genre that would come to be known as heavy metal. Likewise the use of Christian liturgical music was incorporated into the rock paradigm when The Electric Prunes unleashed its unique take on psychedelic rock in 1968 with its classic "Mass In F Minor."

Concurrently things were brewing in Italy where a young Antonio Bartoccetti was nurturing his own vision of how to craft a new art form that would take the darkest and most mysterious sounds possible and insert them into the foundation of what the Italian progressive rock scene was developing around that time. The result was his band JACULA which aimed to embody the emotive responses of the Italian horror culture that was sweeping the late 1960s and early 1970s utilizing themes form film director Mario Brava, a trait that Goblin would pick up on in the latter part of the decade and craft an entire career around. The band was founded in Milan and designed to be an experiment between Bartoccetti, electronic music expert Doris Norton (aka Flamma Dello Spirito), church organ master Charles Tiring and the occult medium Franz Porthenzy.

JACULA on the other hand has remained underground and mysterious even to this very day and recorded some bizarre recordings as far back as 1969 that were purportedly intended for religious sects and ritualistic purposes. An album called "In Cauda Semper Stat Venernum" supposedly came out in 1969 but has pretty much been dismissed as nothing more than demo status material that was reworked and completed and only officially released in 2001. JACULA was totally different from any other band gestating in the early Italian prog years and went down a completely different path that still remains utterly unique and truly bizarre. Featuring only three members, Antonio Bartoccetti on guitars and bass, Doris Norton on vocals, flute and violin and the 68-year old Charles Tiring who played church organ, harpsichord and moog, JACULA featured no percussion and offered one of the most mysterious sounding albums to emerge in 1972.

TARDO PEDE IN MAGIAM VERSUS (Latin for "A Slow Foot Towards The Magic") was sold together with the magazine JACULA which was a horror-porn comic from the era. The music was based on Christian liturgical music with touches of progressive rock, ritual ambient and spoken word narration in the Italian language. Supposedly some of the dialogue included Italian translations of lyrics from King Crimson's "In The Court Of The Crimson King" as well as Van Der Graaf Generator's "Pawn Hearts." What set TARDO PEDE IN MAGIAM VERSUS apart from virtually any other album that graced the early 1970s was the dark pompous use of church organ that absolutely dominates the album's distinct sound as if the entire album was recorded in some underground setting where bizarre occult practices and rituals take place unbeknownst to the public at large.

Secondary to the hermetic occult organ runs is the evocative vocal presence of Doris Norton who adds a gothic occult persona to the dark mysterious musical processions. All lyrics are in the Italian language and the album is said to have been created during seances and other occult rituals. While the music itself may not exactly be considered rock music due to the fact that it features no percussion and the guitar and bass aspects are rather minimal in comparison, the compositions do exhibit a parallel strain of what the prog rock ethos was undertaking in the 1970s therefore it has been adopted into the greater Italian prog rock paradigm of the era. While dismissed by many as a mere gimmick and as an immature attempt to cash in on the shock and horror culture, JACULA really did succeed in crafting an album that takes you into the darkest recesses of music and never lets you escape the journey into the occult for the album's run. Personally i think this is brilliantly unique and enjoy this quite a bit.

The music is somewhat transcendental and one of the most convincing occult rock albums ever released. The over-the-top church organs just take you on a journey that is so powerful that you are literally sucked into this strange new world for the entire run. The incessantly ubiquitous organ runs offer a truly frightening and overpowering experience topped off by the various vocal technicals of Doris Norton who offers some blood-curdling spoken word narrations as well as extremely emotive singing styles. The guitar and bass are secondary but do provide moments of needed contrast while tracks like "Jacula Valzer" eschew the church organ and offer a little respite from the horror of it all. This track features a softly strummed guitar accented by pacifying flute and Norton softly wailing softer wordless vocals behind it all. This is a love or hate one for many but so utterly strange and astonishingly unique that i can't help but love the heck out of it.