Il Tempio delle Clessidre formed in Genoa in 2006 around two people: the keyboard player Elisa Montaldo, and Stefano Galifi, known as Lupo, who forty years earlier had sung on Museo Rosenbach’s Zarathustra. Then, between the first album and this one, Lupo left — to go back to Museo Rosenbach. It is the strangest departure in this guide: a singer leaving a band of the 2010s to rejoin the band of the 1970s he had been borrowed from. What was left was the question of who could possibly follow him.

The short version

AlieNatura is the second album by the Genoese band, released in 2013 on Black Widow Records, roughly three years after the self-titled debut. Fifty-seven minutes, with a twelve-page booklet. Francesco Ciapica sings; Elisa Montaldo plays keyboards, ethnic instruments and sings; Giulio Canepa plays guitars; Fabio Gremo plays bass; Paolo Tixi plays drums. Yoshiko Kase narrates the opening track. Black Widow specialises in the gothic end of progressive rock, and this is the second Tempio album they have put out.

The title, and the singer

AlieNatura is an invented word, made by intersecting aliena and natura, and the lyrics work the ambivalence: they describe how people forget their arcane bond with Nature and try, almost always in vain, to govern and subdue it — alienating themselves from it in the process. Alessandro Sala’s cover painting shows Nature tearing down a curtain, flooding houses and villages, pushing towards the sea and surreally brandishing the moon, trying to take back what was taken from her. As for Ciapica: Italian reviewers agree he manages it without leaving anyone missing his illustrious predecessor, helped by a similar timbre — good news, one adds drily, given the chronic weakness of singing in Italian prog.

The sound

Symphonic and keyboard-rich, with care taken over the sound, vocal enrichments, elaborate arrangements, lyricism and theatricality — and symbolism running between the music and the images. It is the natural continuation of the debut with a grown-up musical consciousness on top. Ciapica’s voice is scratchy in a way that suits a record about nature against people. Every member sings, and the choirs and harmonisations are the product of real compositional work rather than decoration. Montaldo is the engine, and the keyboards are what everybody notices first, but the rhythm section is doing something original underneath and locking to the bass.

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The songs

Kaze — what the wind carries with it — opens as an instrumental, introduced by the sound of wind, with Montaldo on ethnic instruments and Yoshiko Kase narrating. Senza colori follows. Fino alla vetta is the epic, opening on sumptuous dreamlike keyboards. Onirica possessione starts dark and turns taut and painful, with delicate acoustic breaks, and Montaldo takes the lead on voice and keyboards for the final section. Notturna is Montaldo again, a musical poem to the moon. And then Il cacciatore closes at nearly fifteen minutes: symphonic, classically inclined, everything in perfect balance with the keys well forward, and the best thing they have recorded.

Reception and legacy

The band had already played Nearfest in Pennsylvania in 2012, on the strength of a debut that convinced Italy they could match the golden period. Opinion on whether this is better splits neatly: one Italian critic calls it superior to the debut and confirmation that they are among the best in modern Italian prog, while an English reviewer says it does not quite blow him away the way the first one did, though not by much. Both agree on the rest — that the melodies are subtle enough to need several passes, that it repays them, and that Il cacciatore contains everything good about this band in one song.

The verdict

Essential among modern RPI, and the proof that the scene is still producing. Il cacciatore first, all fifteen minutes, because they saved the best for last and it makes the case on its own. Then Onirica possessione. Then Kaze from the top, with the booklet, and let the whole thing run. If you know Museo Rosenbach and came here for Lupo, he is not on it — and the album is good enough that after twenty minutes you will stop noticing.

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