LIVE AT BURG HERZBERG FESTIVAL 2006

The new Italian band Wicked Minds is a 'musical time-machine' that brings you back to the heavy progressive sound of the exciting Seventies era: a Hammond organ (lots of swirling soli) and fiery and biting (often wah-wah) guitar drenched sound and David Byron like vocals in simple but very catchy and compelling songs that will appeal to fans of mainly Uriah Heep but also Deep Purple, Atomic Rooster and even Jimi Hendrix (the track Through My Love is an obvious tribute to the late Jimi featuring a long and distorted guitar solo). This album was recorded in Germany and it's great to hear how proud the Germans are to be able to present Wicked Minds to their fans. I don't need to say more, I only miss some refinement from their studio album Witchflower (wider range of keyboards and use of acoustic guitar) but on the other hand, this band on stage let you freak out so dig this CD if you are up to abovementioned bands or a Hammond organ aficionado!

Wicked Minds are an Italian band from Piacenza that started in 1987 as a trash metal band and only in 2000 (after keyboardist Paolo "Apollo" Negri joined with his Hammond) found a "new dimension", more hard-progressive oriented, releasing two very interesting studio works ("From The Purple Skies" in 2004 and "Witchflower" in 2006). This live album captures them performing live in July 2006 at Burg Herzberg Festival, in Germany, and features eight tracks oozing love for vintage seventies sounds.

The album is well recorded and all the members of the band display a great musicianship. Although the music draws heavily on classic hard rock (Uriah Heep and Deep Purple above all), Wicked Minds never play by rote and they always try to add something different to their sound, combining their "sources of inspiration" with their own tastes. The song-writing is definitively good and they succeed in avoiding plagiarism: the delicate ballad "Drifting" and the final "Shadows Train" in my opinion are outstanding songs that would perfectly fit the tastes of every hard rock fan, but all the album flows away without really weak moments. You can find here more than seventy minutes full of enthusiasm and energy... If you love bands like Deep Purple, Uriah Heep, Wishbone Ash, give a try to this work: I'm sure that you won't be disappointed!