HERO

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I came onto this album, last fall, in a shameful attempt to outdo the master himself Erik Neuteboom in finding albums and groups that even the family members of the group members themselves , wouldn't even remember or know hahaha. I saw that this album was being rereleased after being long out of print. I saw the chance to have a rereleased 1974 RPI (Rock Progressivo Italiano) album that probably few had heard, and I jumped at it. First impresssions... a waste of $18 musically though still a chance to add a new artist to the my beloved RPI, and my expense check from PA's would cover that cost hahaha. My enthusiasm for trying to outdo Erik however waned and the group sat outside PA's and the album sat on my shelf. Fast forward several months later and I'm sitting at the computer, screwing around on PA's and I felt the urge to hear something different. I spied the baby blue cover of the CD crying out to be heard at least one more time so I gave it another chance, this time something grabbed me. I listened again.. and again .. and again. Don't let me kid you, this album is not the 2nd coming of Close to the Edge.. or even Caress of Steel hahaha but it is a decent album. Over time several of the tracks have actually grown on me to attain 'crank it up' status. All in all .. not a bad album by any means.

The music is generally a heavy prog, with the Hammond Organ the predominant instrument. Enough time changes to keep the listener on his toes, not virutoso musicians by any stretch of the imagination but very competant. The opening track Merry Go Round with that..great organ riff was the first thing on the album that really grabbed me. Sounds so good with the amplifier on 11. The next song Crumbs Of A Day is not bad, the 9/8 section in the middle salvages the song from the irratating guitar meanderings. Sunday's Best has a lovely atmospheric intro that extends well into the song that I enjoy. Seminar is a hard proggin song with a driving rhythm and nice Hammond organ as well. Children's Game is somewhat bland.. not much happening there, not really a favorite. Knock begins with... of course hahah.. a piano riff that immitates the pounding of fists on a door. Nice tempo death spiral into some musical meandering and noodling before heading into the main verse sections of the song. Once again nice stuff, nothing too exciting. Clapping and Smiliing is my favorite track on the album, at 9+ minutes a nice prog mini epic. A nice piano melody with accompanied by the accoustic guitar starts the song, continuing through the first verse sections. The pace changes with a nice gutar and organ riff that brings in the next verse sections. No clue what the song is about, but this is prog.. not pop. I don't listen to lyrics for the most part. Love the spacey atmospheric ending to the song. Good stuff. Dew-Drops is up next. It's primarily a showcase for Deller's keyboard work. Varied and interesting... good stuff.

As noted in the main section of the review, the lyrics aren't particularly noteworthy. Heck in many sections I can't understand what he is singing. It is in English but Deller either didn't have a powerful voice or he was put low in the mix. Again, it's alright, this is prog not pop. Lyrics are an afterthought hahah. Nice album.. one I like to listen to occasionally when vegging out on PA's or reading a book. I'll give it a personal rating of 2.5 stars for me and give it 1.5 for the forum at large. Not exactly unique or inventive, but with enough listens.. you may find something you like. I did and listen to this album more than all my Genesis albums combined hahha. Anyway 2 stars.. for collectors of RPI only.

Michael aka micky

Something was in the water.

This one goes on my lost gem shelf. One of the weirdest albums I've heard in a while but I've taken quite a liking to it. At first play you might really think this sucks but it is a definite grower.

It might be categorized as Italian symphonic but to my ears this is lost hard psych rock. Very strange, like mixing Sabbath riffs with Jan Dukes de Grey, Traffic pacing, and some Morrison darkness in the lyrics.

Another view of the sound is as follows: "Musically I would consider Hero a combination of art rock with a heavy progressive feel, there are vibes from Gong, Van Der Graaf Generator, early Floyd and King Crimson most definitely, but there is also a dark doomy sound to it as well." [end quote from www.Italianprog.com]

The 9-minute standout track "Clapping and Smiling" is really quite a departure from the earlier tracks, featuring a lovely piano and folksy acoustic guitar for the first third. Then things again get powerful with hard vocals, Bill Ward style drumming and guitar that begs to be played loud. That final third of the song slows down again and gets pretty spacey and reminds me a little of Syd Barrett were he fronting a hard rock band! I told you this was weird stuff!

The album closes with a nice acoustic piece called "Buzzard" which serves to smooth out the previous sonic assaults and talk us in off the ledge. The final lyrical line is: "My pain will serve to be something." Before the album was even released their guitarist Massimo was killed in an auto wreck adding further weight to the strange mood of this work.

The playing is both amateurish-sounding in places and yet still quite compelling overall. The LP-sleeve reissued CD is very nice with a band history and bonus track. Vocals are in English.

Hero is an album that has become a prized keeper for me but I understand it will appeal to a relatively small portion of this site. For me this is a 4-star album but for many of you it will be 2-3 I would guess. If you are really into early 70s dark and weird hard rock that defies easy categorizing, Hero might blow your mind. Or perhaps just irritate your family.

Hero is a forgotten italian group from mid '70's who plays heavy prog. Their selftitled only album from 1974 bring nothing new under the heavy prog flag, but holds good pieces, that needs maybe a better attention by prog listners. This album is so rare that took me ore than 4 month to find it, on Cd, the original release on vinyl from 1974 is lost somewhere in dust of time and worth fortunes for collectors. Anyway is pretty rare even on Cd, and not many listners heared about this italian band. Their music is heavy prog with keybords arrangements and nice shifts between guitar and predominant instrument keys, but don't expect to another ELP influenced album. The most unintristing thing here is the voice of Robert Deller, who is not a bad vocalist, but don't shines at all, he only sings the notes. Now the music remainds me in places with early german bands Walpurgis and Dull Knife, and on piece Knock, the manner of interpretation of Robert Deller on voice is like on any Vand Der Graaf Generator album from early'70's, he realy is one on one with Peter Hammill here. The music as I said is heavy prog but very vague in contrast with what other bands done it in that times, seams thay didn't manage to creat something realy great, that's why this album is a good one but nothing special. This band remains unknown even for italian scene not to mention the rest of the planet. Influences are from german heavy prog scene and in places from Van Der Graaf Generator and even that dark atmosphere from King Crimson music mostly in arrangements. Finaly the best pieces are Childrens game, the longest track from here Clapping and Smiling and Dew drops, the rest are only ok. I will give to this album 2.5 rounded to 3, not realy bad but nothing to talk about either. One of those bands that for one reason or other goes into oblivion.

I've read a lot of regional music history books over the years, but as I listened to this album for the first time it occurred to me that I've never read one about the German music scene. I'll definitely have to add this to the 'to-do' list.

I get the impression there were all kinds of bands running around Germany in the early seventies, including many who were imports and/or were comprised of multinational memberships. Of those a fair number played some form of heavy progressive music, including Sweet Smoke, Krokodil, Prudence, Odin and these guys. All of them seem to have been influenced by the Krautrock sound at least a bit, and Hero were no exception.

At least two of the three members were of Italian descent, while according to various biographies the lead singer and keyboardist Robert Deller was "English". He sounds very American to me, but I can't find any information that would confirm or deny this. In any case his lineage gives him the ability to deliver all the band's vocals in English, which given the fact they left Italy to pursue their career might have helped them touring had they managed to hold together longer. Guitarist Massimo Pravato was killed in an auto accident shortly after this album was recorded, and the band was all but defunct before it even released.

Like some of the bands I mentioned above the blend of backgrounds and transplant to Germany (Munich in this case) seem to have resulted in a fairly eclectic and experimental nature to Hero's music, although it still manages to stay firmly planted in heavy rock territory for the most part. There is the odd spoken-word acoustic closer "Buzzard", but otherwise things stay heavy but adventurous throughout.

I have to say that the first few times I spun this thing I was a tad put off by the first couple of tracks. The opening "Merry Go Round" starts off well enough; brooding guitar intro and a building sense of anticipation that things are going to explode into something brilliant. But when the onslaught comes its rather flat with insipid lyrics and far too reminiscent of the Spinal Tap space-egg concert scene for my comfort. And while I love Hammond organ as much as the next progophile, one has to at least attempt to play it within the construct of the music which barely seems to be the case here. The second song "Crumbs of a Day" is frankly worse, a mash-up of improvisational guitar feedback riffs, staccato drumming and Hammond that oscillates wildly between overpowering and nonexistent. I actually do like Buzzard's vocals on this one and that may be its one saving grace.

After several playings I've begun to warm to the first couple of tracks a bit more, but I still have a bit of trouble getting Spinal Tap out of my head when I hear them.

Things do get better very quickly with "Sunday Best", one of the longer songs on the album and much more controlled and (dare I say) melodic than the first two. The band shows their chops a bit with some vocal harmonizing as well. I like the way the group lets the Hammond take center stage on this song and don't overwork the guitar or percussion to try and fill any spaces left by the keyboards. The result is something that sounds clean and precise which I always expect of Italian hard rock, but at the same time retains that undeniable Krautrock heavy, almost metal scent.

"Seminar" breaks up the mood with a more stilted organ sound and jerky tempo that was more than likely meant to be delivered to stoned teenagers in concert. I can just see a human wave of long-hairs in black t-shirts undulating to the frenzied tempo, index and little fingers extended and a f**k-the-world sneer on their faces. Further proof that heavy metal has strong roots in both progressive rock.

On the other hand "Children's Game" is more balanced between keyboards and guitar and, while this one is also quite heavy, manages to come off as more of a mood piece than a headbanger. "Knock" is a variation on "Seminar" and despite the decent guitar soloing late in the song could have been left off the album in my opinion.

If the band had a signature tune it would probably be "Clapping and Smiling", a nine-minute dirge that starts of as acoustic guitar noodling over wispy keyboards, builds to a heavy midsection before stretching out with more expansive keyboards and electric guitar noodling before rising up once again briefly to climax. I can't say the group innovated anything with this song, but they did manage to keep it together and tight for more than nine minutes without any obvious improvisation or lack of studio discipline, which tells me they were pretty decent musicians. "Dew-Drops" is sort of a reverse construction of this, starting off heavy and laying out a couple times in the middle but finishing strong. Here there is evidence of improvising though, particularly on keyboards. I get the sense the band was running out of ideas by this point, not surprising considering this is a debut and the album is more than forty-five minutes long.

Good luck finding the original vinyl of this thing. There are at least four CD reissues I know of and even a vinyl reissue but that one is probably lost to time as well. I've no idea which of these is legitimate and which are dubious knockoffs although I will say my copy is not a remastered reissue so I have my doubts about it. Anyway, it probably doesn't matter if you follow my recommendation, which is not to look too hard for this record. It has its moments but is for the most part lost to time because it deserves to be. Two stars out of five for collectors of obscure multinational prog music, but otherwise keep moving down the record aisle and look for something under "I" or "J".

peace

I had an interesting journey with this album. My first listen was in my vehicle and I knew this was an italian band but that's all I knew. Anyway I got through the first track and popped it out being disappointed that something that sounded so early seventies had English vocals and just sounded like a heavy Proto-Prog band. Well fast forward a couple of weeks and I decide to spend some time with it in order to do this review. The big change in my attitude towards this album came when I realized that this wasn't RPI, this was heavy Psychedelic music with that Krautrock spirit. As soon as I understood this I fell for it. So imagine my surprise when after i've done my review I read on the "net" that this band moved to Germany for a couple of years and recorded this album there in 1972 with a German record label. Maybe surprise isn't the right word but I felt really happy about myself (haha). Believe me it doesn't happen often. Sadly the singer died in an accident in 1973 the year before this was released.

This is a concept album and I found some the lyrics quite moving as it deals with childhood stuff. "Merry Go Round" opens with cymbals as tasteful guitar plays over top and reserved vocals join in. The vocals don't stay reserved for long though as it kicks in after 1 1/2 minutes. Heavy SABBATH-like guitar here as the contrasts continue. "Crumbs Of A Day" opens with drums, bass, guitar and floating organ. Vocals before 2 minutes then it picks up. Nice. "Sunday Best" has spacey keys and the vocals arrive before 1 1/2 minutes as it kicks in. It becomes pretty laid back each time the vocals stop. "Seminar" is a fairly aggressive song with prominant organ and guitar. Vocals come and go.

"Children's Game" is raw and aggressive at times. "Knock" has vocals that sort of shout out the lyrics. Not a big fan of this. It becomes powerful after 1 1/2 minutes followed by vocals and a more melodic soundscape. "Clapping And Smiling" has acoustic guitar and piano to start as reserved vocals join in. We get some passion before 4 1/2 minutes and some nice guitar a minute later. The music stops then spoken words come in then it builds. The guitar is great later. "Dew-Drops" is experimental and psychedelic early on. Drums start to lead as the organ joins in. Killer sound after 3 minutes. A calm 4 1/2 minutes in. It picks up a minute later with organ then the guitar comes in. Hell yeah ! "Buzzard" ends it with picked guitar and spoken words.

I will be keeping this in my Psychedelic / Krautock section for sure. A solid 4 stars.