DARWIN!

Just as Premiata Forneria Marconi, Banco del Mutuo Soccorso managed to create two absolute masterpieces in 1972 (as the debut and second records), and most importantly: they were able to create a very notorious change of sound from one album to another, making both of these albums absolutely different and independent to one another. With their second record, Banco del Mutuo Soccorso got into the universe of conceptual Progressive Rock: an album based on Charles Darwin's theories charged with the most exquisite musical arrangements consolidated them as one of the most promising bands of the 70s Italian Prog Rock scene.

The basic rock structure of guitar, bass, drums, and keyboards gets mixed with a lot of different musical textures; "L'evoluzione" is the longest piece and also the most diverse one: it goes from intense rock to some very fuzzy and even a little spacey organ lines with calm middle sections through which Francesco Di Giacomo's voice floats around. "La conquista della posizione eretta" starts with a very energetic instrumental section that takes almost the entire piece until Francesco sings again in the last minutes; bass and keyboards are the most dominant instruments in the song.

The jazzy instrumental piece "La danza dei grandi rettili" is exquisite: the very discrete percussions and piano give the song its body while Marcello Todaro plays very nice guitar figures with an almost George Benson flavor. "Cento mani e cento occhi" is an intense rock piece with an unstoppable keyboard line that gives the impression that something's going to explode; however, it includes a very brief but yet very elegant piano line in the middle section. "750,000 anni fa, l'amore?" Is just beautiful: a very relaxed piano-led song consolidated with Di Giacomo's singing until the very end of the song when we get a very short rock ending that was probably unnecessary but not bad at all.

"Miserere alla storia" is where Gianni Nocenzi's clarinet got an almost protagonistic role, even though the instrument is present on the whole record, in here took a dominant role on very specific parts of the song and the result was great. The album ends with the short "Ed ora io domando tempo al tempo ed egli mi risponde non ne ho!" In which BMS brought the Mediterranean music influence to the record, this short piece was a very nice closure to the record, my only complaint would be about the minute 2:37 where the tempo of the song had a stumbling block (I don't know if it was intentional or accidental but it is very annoying).

"Darwin!" Is an absolute and undeniable masterpiece that should be on any Progressive Rock collection, I could never rate it lower than five stars.

SONG RATING: L'evoluzione, 5 La conquista della posizione eretta, 5 La danza dei grandi rettili, 5 Cento mani e cento occhi, 4 750,000 anni fa, l'amore? 5 Miserere alla storia, 5 Ed ora domando tempo al tempo ed egli mi risponde non ne ho! 4

AVERAGE: 4.71

PERCENTAGE: 94.2

ALBUM RATING: 5 stars

I ranked this album #64 on my TOP 100 favorite Progressive Rock albums of all time.

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