TRANSIBERIANA

Francesco Di Giacomo died in 2014 and it was such a tragic loss for the whole Progressive Rock community; I was one of those people who thought that there couldn't and shouldn't exist an incarnation of Banco del Mutuo Soccorso after him so when "Transiberiana" was announced and I found out that not only it was BMS without Francesco, but BMS without any original member except for Vittorio Nocenzi, I was expecting it to be a total fiasco, but reading several positive opinions giving a warm welcome to this new line-up I got interested on it and decided to give it a try.

Something has to be clear from the very beginning: Tony D'Alessio doesn't sing at all similar to Francesco Di Giacomo; of course, Francesco's voice was a very iconic detail to the style of the band but a new singer doesn't have to be a forced copy of the original singer, D'Alessio sings in its own way, he's not trying to fill Francesco's huge shoes (even the live versions of "Metamorfosi" and "Il ragno" that were included as bonus tracks sound renewed with D'Alessio's vocals) and that's respectable but if you're looking for a BMS album that sounds similar to the days when Francesco used to be on the group, this is not for you.

Musically, you're not going to find almost anything similar to Banco early albums, not similar to "Darwin!", "Sono nato libero", "Canto di primavera" or "Come in un'ultima cena", the music played by this new line-up of young musicians is very original and fresh too. The songs present an intense almost Hard Rock with very scarce symphonic of folky moments, the energy of this bunch of kids have (sorry, I don't know them out of this, and to my knowledge, they're kids playing under the leadership of a legend such as Vittorio) is great, quite different to BMS' energy on the seventies but that's ok since this doesn't have to be the same.

I hope Vittorio Nocenzi lives for many many more years, I do not know if he and this new line-up of Banco are going to launch more records but I really hope that when he's not on this earth anymore or he just doesn't want to keep the Banco project going on, these kids don't keep launching albums using Banco's name on it as those impostors on Gong and Soft Machine did, this is Banco because of Vittorio.

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