The band are called the other side of the medal, so RCA put an actual medal in the record. The first seven thousand copies of Io come io came with a bronzed medallion carrying the band logo and the title, sitting behind a die-cut hole in the sleeve; two further editions replaced it, one with a photograph of the group visible through the hole and one — the hardest of all to find — with a photograph of the medallion itself. The debut had come wrapped in a round booklet shaped like a medal. This band committed to the joke.

The short version

Io come io is the second album by the Roman quartet, released on RCA in 1972, a year after La Bibbia. Four tracks. Pino Ballarini sings and plays flute; Enzo Vita plays guitar; Stefano Urso plays bass; Gino Campoli plays drums. There are no keyboards at all, which is the fact that shapes everything else — Italians describe this as an unusual, harsh, hard form of progressive rock precisely because nothing is filling the middle. Franco Di Sabbatino would not arrive until the following year, and with him would come Contaminazione.

Live

The band came out of a group called I Lombrichi and took the new name in 1970 once Ballarini joined; RCA signed them immediately for a sound described as unique, dark and extremely heavy. What made them a peculiar case even by international standards was the equipment. Their amplification was unique and its total power devastating for the period; dozens of lamps produced colours and effects while hundreds of slides and films were projected continuously through the show. It made them one of the most advanced Italian bands on a stage, and it is the context for the records — this was a group whose natural habitat was volume.

The sound

The hardest hard rock they made, filling up with progressive veins, and shot through with acoustic guitar and flute. It is more considered and more refined than the debut, and less instinctive — there is more attention to melody, the Deep Purple and Black Sabbath reference points still hold, and something from across the Channel has been absorbed. The real change is the bass. On La Bibbia the guitar was the absolute protagonist; here Urso comes forward and often leads, to the point where Vita sometimes sounds like he is supporting. The drumming is soft, elegant and refined in both the hard passages and the calm ones, and the choral work brings a hint of psychedelia.

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The songs

Four pieces, threaded together the way concept albums are, with the structures evolving along the line. Fenomeno is second and holds the level the opening sets. Non io has the most beguiling vocal melodies and the most abrupt changes of rhythm. In between there is stillness and reflection in the acoustic inserts. The philosophy is where it gets interesting: the sleeve notes quote the German idealist Hegel on the determinations of knowledge and the mutual relation of subject and object, which is an unusual thing to print on a hard rock record, and the title points just as firmly at Fichte and his I. Sources disagree about which philosopher the album is actually built on.

Reception and legacy

Rockol calls it one of the most underrated works in seventies Italian rock, and an Italian reviewer notes what usually dates records of this era — the singing and the quality of the words — and says nothing here has aged badly. The objections are equally consistent. Italians rate it more technically accomplished but less effective than the debut. The sound quality reflects hurried sessions and approximate production. And one reviewer makes the sharpest case against it: this band’s identity was never beauty or cleanliness, they should be powerful and metallically heavy, and getting more refined and more avant-garde was a loss disguised as progress.

The verdict

Worth it, and the least discussed of the three. Non io first, for the melodies and the sudden turns. Then Fenomeno. Then play La Bibbia and Contaminazione either side of it and hear what this is: the middle record, harder than the one that made them famous and more thoughtful than the one that got them signed, made by four men with no keyboard player and a truck full of amplifiers. If you already love Contaminazione and want to know where the weight underneath it came from, it came from here.

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