IL DOMENICANO BIANCO

Nine years ago when I received the album Il Volto Verde (2013) by this Italian group for reviewing it here, it was among my less satisfying tasks as a reviewer, although I managed to write a fairly positive-sounding review with some additional background info. Now I can only try to write another decent review despite the lack of personal enthusiasm. Two other albums have been released in between, in 2017 and 2018. I haven't listened to them. The line-up is different, concerning also the vocalists, but I'm not going to re-listen to the mentioned former album in order to give this review more depth by comparing the two.

Starting with the facts, one thing that this album shares with Il Volto Verde is the literary inspiration. Also this one was inspired by a novel of the Austrian author Gustav Meyrink (1868 - 1932) who is said to have inspired the better know Prague-based writer Franz Kafka. I'm only familiar with Meyrink's horror novel Golem which is rooted on a Jewish legend and which I didn't like at all as a piece of literature when reading it on my trip to Prague some years ago. Il Segno Del Comando made an album of it, too, in 2002 -- hardly surprising! The White Dominican is the English title for the book inspiring this new album with the lyrics and most of the music written by bassist Diego Banchero. Sadly the leaflet doesn't have English translations of lyrics.

Roughly half of the album is instrumental, fortunately so, because I don't actually like vocals of Riccardo Morello. His manly voice is not bad per se, but his expression sounds flat and too shouty for my ears. With three members handling keyboards one could expect the overall sound to be wider in colour and dynamics, but the band plays pretty heavily most of the time. Pianistic, lighter moments are rather absent. There, you've got it, the reason I'm not so thrilled, since heavy is not among my favourite braches of music, even less so within Rock Progressivo Italiano. There have always been plenty of heavy RPI with lots of organ, both in the seventies and in the recent decades. The symphonic aspect is not very strong with this band, even if several pieces are around eigth minutes in length.

But they do make some good melodies here and there. 'Ofelia' is my fave of the vocal tracks. The opening and closing instrumentals are ok in their brevity. 'La Testa di Medusa' is a short solo organ piece by Beppi Menozzi and it increases the sense of Gothic heaviness/darkness of the whole album. 'Il Dissolvimento del Corpo Con la Spada' is the proggiest instrumental, lots of intense action in it.

If you're already into the heavier and darker end of the RPI spectre, surely this album is for you to enjoy. The production is fairly good.