SEARCHING FOR A LAND

This double album from "The New Trolls" is quite disparate and shows little unity throughout over seventy minutes of music. The band was willing to conquer new markets and the album was sung in English (as Banco & PFM will do later on as well). I have little arguments for this: English or Italian is not the point. Only personality matters.

And the least I can say, is that one could have expected more from the band. The early Bowie inspired "In St. Peter's Day" is not too bad but totally unexpected. One of the few true song that has this charming "Italian" style is "Once That I Prayed", thanks to its wonderful piano play.

The tranquil and Canterbury oriented "A Land To Live?" is also elegant: vocals are on the soft side and the early stages of the song feature a fine guitar work which is taken over by a long (Hammond?) organ solo. A good heavy prog part.

The original first album closes on the long "To Edith": while the instrumental parts (the longest ones) are damned good, the vocal ones doen't sound real great. It seems that Di Palo wants to emulate Plant ("Your Time Is Gonna Come"). Mixed bag feeling I'm afraid.

What's available during the live part of this album is rather inconsistent. Basic hard to heavy rock with poor vocals ("Bright lights"), a self indulgent track as it was often the case in the early seventies ("Intro"), a Tull oriented "Black Night" under the name of "Muddy Madalein". Nothing extraordinary as you can see.

The long "Lying There" is probably the one that is more appealing to prog ears. Very much keyboard oriented for a long while. ELP is at hand before the "vocals" start. It is yet another painful moment I'm afraid?These yelling are quite unbearable and the audience "reactions" quite suspicious. The guitar solo is as good or as dull (it belongs to your taste) as it can be.

In all, this album is not what I consider as a masterpiece. Average corresponds more to my perception. Let's upgrade it to three stars since two and a half is not possible.