SACRIFICIO

3.5 stars, really. Progressive music may never sold that many records but brought to rock´n roll something it quite not had before: respect as a serious form of art. Now jazz and classical musicians were among the ones that were rocking. And, of course, several other succesful groups wanted to be taken seriously too. Many pop artists released ´progressive´, ´concept´ albums (even ´rock operas´) in the 70´s. Of course most of the final results were pitious effords, that most people (including the musicians themselves) would rather forget they ever existed. But sometimes a pop group could prove they had both the technical musical skill and the gifted songwrting habilities to step into the progressive genre without making a fool of themselves. Certainly Equipe 84 can be included among them.

This beat group was one of the most popular bands in Italy in the 60´s and early 70´s and in 1974 released a prog record called Sacrificio. With the help of several guests (including a couple of musicians from band Nuova Idea) the Lp was released in 1974 and proved that this outfit had more talented than most people wanted to believe. Of course the music here is not exactly symphonic rock, nor it is in the same league as names like PFM, Banco or Le Orme. Still, Sacrifio was a bold and risky move for such stabilished outfit. And the results proved quite worthy.

The creepy, droning, 3 minute intro made me wonder if they went too far, but from the second track onwards the record is made of high quality prog rock. The group fortunatly kept their knack for great melodies and strong hooks, and yet the songs here are much more complex and elaborated than anything they had released so far. The title track is a good example of a very fine prog rock song, while Un Cavallo... Un Amore and Mercante Senza Fiori show them working beautiful acoustic passages. There is good use of vocal harmonies, orchestrations and even some flute and brass. Production is very good for the time.

Except for the the aforementioned intro, there was no fillers to be found in this CD. The mix of progressive rock, folk and italian popular music made it a truly succesful experiment. It is only a shame that this band did not follow this path afterwards. However, they proved their point and Sacrificio was, at least, an artistic success. It stood well the test of time. And I´m glad I found this little prog gem. If you´re into the italian prog scene of the 70´s you should check this out.