This band formed in 1974 and released their first album in 1992. Eighteen years. One reviewer suggests they hold some sort of record for it, and the arithmetic is the story: five men who started as teenagers were approaching forty by the time anybody pressed their music onto a disc. What kept them going was nothing but each other — through eighteen years of demo tapes that no record company wanted, the line-up simply refused to dissolve. Then Vinyl Magic finally said yes, and what they put out was not a new record at all.

The short version

Sono io il Signore delle Terre a Nord was recorded and mixed in January 1992 at the Synergy Studio outside Turin and released the same year on Vinyl Magic. Eight tracks. Aldo Bergamini plays guitar and sings; Massimo Di Lauro plays violin; Roberto Giordano plays keyboards and sings; Dino Fiore plays bass; Paolo Ferrarotti plays drums and sings. That is essentially the 1974 line-up, with Giordano having replaced Giampiero Marchiori in 1982. The band credit two people with getting them there: Vinyl Magic, and Beppe Crovella, the keyboard player from Arti e Mestieri.

Eighteen years

The band explain the record better than any reviewer has. It marked the beginning of their recording life, they say, and it contains a selection of the best of their compositions from 1974 to 1992 — work that until that moment had been lying dormant in their sheet music. So this is not a debut in any ordinary sense. It is eighteen years of writing, opened up and sorted through, with the best of it recorded at last by the same men who wrote it. They also note, without ceremony, that it is still their best-selling album and the one prog collectors still hunt for.

The sound

Traditional Italian symphonic progressive rock with a few nineties textures on top, deeply attached to seventies vintage sound, with folk in it and the violin out front. Di Lauro’s violin is the identity of this band. An American listener places the record somewhere between Quella Vecchia Locanda and Banco del Mutuo Soccorso, distorted by modern instrumentation — dark, romantic, complex but accessible and melodic, and capable of leaving anybody who cares about RPI speechless. The strongest thing here is the interplay between the violin and the fast piano passages. The singing is decent and firmly in the romantic, expressive manner of the seventies bands.

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The songs

Tirando le somme opens, and its closest relatives are the neo-progressive bands of the eighties rather than anything from 1974 — which is the first sign that these compositions have been living and changing for two decades rather than sitting still. From there the album settles into its own weather: eight pieces built around violin and piano, guitars that stay tasteful and melodic, and the occasional flirtation with something harder. Not every track lands with the same force, and Italians say so. But the good ones are very good, and the instrumental quality never drops below serious.

Reception and legacy

It was met with excellent reviews and became the band’s foundation, and it is genuinely loved. It is also genuinely criticised, and the objections are consistent enough to report: the production is weak, the added keyboard sounds are cheesy and closer to pomp rock than to anything else here, and the sleeve is, to be honest about it, ugly. The harshest reading calls the whole thing derivative — well executed and harmonically remarkable, but adding nothing to a standard the seventies had already set. The band went on to Mexico’s Baja Prog in 2005 and Japan in 2008, and most people now rate the later Capitolo 7 as their best work.

The verdict

Worth your time, especially if the RPI of 1973 is what you actually want more of. Tirando le somme first. Then let the violin lead you through the rest. Do not expect a revolution — this is a band who spent eighteen years perfecting a thing they loved rather than looking for a new one, and the criticism and the appeal are the same fact seen from two sides. If it works on you, go to Capitolo 7 next. Five men who would not stop, and eventually somebody let them make the record.

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