A PIEDI NUDI

The second offer of this discret and unknown italian band, issued at same Mellow records in 1995 named Creazione is for sure better in every aspect like the previous one. Here the arrangements are more intricate more elaborated with nice alternating heavy prog sections with more mellower ones. Still very heavy and with an experimental aura on some tunes with horns added on few pieces, gives a quite intresting atmosphere overall. I was staying little longer then usual to this band, because on first couple of spins was a real acquiring taste their music, but in the end I begone to appreciated more and more. Some great moments here like on Memorie, Regina Del Torrente or Dea Delle Rocce, Signore Del Vento , heavy prog as must sound this style. Even has some minor flaws here and there, overall this is a great and unnoticed album. Some flute interfear in the heavy sections on Partenza giving a very '70's feel. In fact all the album sounds very 70 a combination of King Crimson with italian beauty alal Balletto di Bronzo.. Some more gentle mellower moments on this release and in combination with heavy prog sections the result is better in every way then on previous work. The voice is cleaner and more confided here. I really like this album after 5-6 listnings, definetly a grower, 3.5 rounded to 4 this time, strange cover art but goes hand in hand with the odd passages in some parts offered. A forgotten little album.

This italian band from the '90's A Piedi Nudi is their name is quite unknown and aswell has a very short career who lasted until 1999. First album self titled issued in 1994 at Mellow records is a heavy work indeed, combining elements from '70's heavy prog with their own twist. Some arrangements remind me a lot of King Crimson even Campo Di Marte in places. Fury guitar parts with keyboards added in the mix, overall is a pretty decent album but far from being something of a real intrest. Some decent vocal parts, but in some moments Mirko Schiesaro sounds very dull and unintresting. All pieces has same flavour heavy prog all the way, 3 stars is best I can give, really.

This third album from ''A Piedi Nudi'' is rather dark and heavy.

Their heavy side was already quite noticeable during their first two albums, and this one is quite a continuation of these efforts. This album shows some sort of a combination between doom (Sabbath) and Italian flavour. Still: the latter is rather scarce IMHHO.

This album might be mostly appreciated by metal lovers (to whom I don't belong) than Italian ISP lovers (to whom I do belong).

Actually, if it weren't for this dual effect, this band shouldn't really be of any interest. Heavy stuff with some subtle and light passages ("Le Amanti"). This is a fine demonstration of all their talent: vocal harmonies, skilled instrumentation, wild passages. KC is truly a source of inspiration as well.

The sound brings us back to the seventies, but the songwriting is not as quite spectacular to be honest. "Senza Ritorno" is quite boring to tell the truth. The scary "Reverendo" prolongs the heavy feel without too much of inspiration to tell the truth. Sub, subpar Sabbath. Combined with some Italian tone. This track is just decent; no more.

Here & there, there are some quite remarkable and delicate passages. This is best experienced during "Temporale" which is probably the best song out there.

I would classify this album more into the "heavy eclectic" genre (if it would be available). "L'Infidele" is quite clear about this feeling. The sweet closing part is somewhat out of place but so great! At the end of the day, the complexity of the music that can be found here deserves three stars. But don't expect anything close to the sweet ISP genre. Heavy it is, heavy it remains ("Amici D'Infanzia").

The long and closing "Eclissi" features a different shape: some Oriental influence, and more tranquil overall.

This relatively recent Italian band (the nineties) released three albums. This sophomore one is mostly inspired by the glorious seventies and is leaning for a big deal towards KC and ELP at times. This is particularly true during the long opener "Memorie".

This is a thirteen minutes epic dedicated to these great times (even if not very original). Another source of inspiration of the bans is the inevitable "Genesis" during "Partenza" (sweet flute reminds me of the great "Trespass").

Most songs are really a great trip back to the best years of progressive music (which are the seventies of course). Great mellotron and darkness are featured during the short "Dea Delle Rocce, Signore Del Vento". Vocals (as usual for most ISP) are quite delicate and performing.

This song is hesitating between sweet and tender vocal parts and wild instrumental passages. It is quite a great moment indeed!

ELP is again on the menu while "Nueva Vita" reaches your CD player. The whole can of course sound not too much personal (which is true). This album will please any ISP lover but due to the lack of originality, I rate it with three stars. A good album though.

You might know that I am an addicted ISP fan.

When I listened to this band, I had quite mixed feelings: great symphonic moments at times, combined with some devastating metal portions; the whole being topped with great vocal harmonies ("Colore Viola").

This band is not one of the most beloved ones on PA. But so are many of my beloved Italian flavours. The music displayed is often on the heavy side like during the title track; but this is not too outrageous as far as I am concerned: the pumping organ is quite alright and the psyche mood overall is rather encouraging, even if it sounds quite outdated (although this record was released in 94).

But this is a global feeling. Most of this album sounds as if it was taken out the early seventies (including production, unfortunately). There are really few songs with potential. Most are rather average ("Il Sabba" or "Il Castello").

The heavy side is back again with "Aberla Tra Le Braccia", but this can hardly bear the prog flag. The music sounds too much old fashioned anyway. If it were recorded in the late sixties my opinion would have been different?

As such, this album is not worth more than three stars. Be aware though that this rating is on the upper edge for this Italian / metal combo. Even the long "Il Duelo" can't cope with the giants of the genre.

This album sounds as déjà vu by all means. Even if "La Cattura" is a superb, upbeat and heavy prog song: it is the best available as far as I am concerned on this album. It is a solid heavy song indeed. Full of maestria: being the beat, the great organ or the huge guitar. It is THE highlight for sure. The closing numbers are just fillings even if "Epilogo" shares passionate vocals with dark music. Three stars overall is my rating. This is quite a bizarre album.

The final album from this fine Italian band.

The final album also have an updated sound which actually sounds like the 1990s and not like the 1970s. That includes a plastic sounding synth sound which is not that great. But the guitar sounds and the vocals has been vastly improved from the previous two albums.

A Piedi Nudi is most definate in the dark corner of the Rock Progressivo Italiano scene. Dark and heavy. This is by far the most heavy album of their three albums and is bordering to and within the heavy prog genre.

The quality is good throughout without really impressing me. No great tracks here, but this is clearly their best album. The guitar sound and the excellent solos is alone worth the purchase of this album.

I hope A Piedi Nudi reforms again and gives us some more album. This band had great potential, but they were perhaps twenty years too late and ten years too early. Rock Progressivo Italiano fans of today would had lapped this band up like a cat laps up fresh cream. Let's hope they reform.

3.5 stars

Quite a nice change from the first album, I have to say.

A Piedi Nudi is back with their second album. This time with a more controlled RPI themed album. The band still have some volcano like break out of heavy prog and both their sound and music is most definate in the border area between RPI and heavy prog. But the vocals is this time much warmer and lyrical. There are even some pastoral melody bridges here. The sound is much more like the golden 1970s with bands like Biglietto Per Inferno as a good reference.

Unfortunate, this album is let down by the lack of some really great songs. The songs on this album is not bad. But neither is this an exciting album either. A few melody lines are great and that's really it. The sound and the band is better than on their debut album. But the band has yet to deliver any great songs which marks them out as a band worth keeping a close eye on.

Good but not great.

3 stars

Hmmmm......... An acquired taste indeed.

A Piedi Nudi debuted with this album. An album whose sound is very much on the darker end of the Rock Progressivo Italiano scene. There are enough chugging metal guitars to go around here and the vocals is leaning towards power metal too. The rest of the instrumentations is vintage Rock Progressivo Italiano though and that balances things out. Well, almost.

The music is a mix of heavy and melodic. There are some good to very good melody lines scattered around here. This being a debut album, I don't get the feeling neither the band or their music is the finished article. But this is still a good album from a good band. I am not overawed by this album though and I expect someting far better on their second album.

3 stars

I think it is telling that this is the fourth time that I have listened to this album today (admittedly, this also makes it the fourth time I have ever listened to it, so I cannot claim to be an expert on it) and yet what do I have stuck in my head? King crimson. Clearly, then, this is not an instantly attention-capturing soul-gripping album. Possibly, it could be a 'grower', but somehow I doubt it. Do not misinterpret this rather negative introduction to mean that I hated or even disliked this album, in fact there were moments of great beauty within it. This is, then, a slightly above average prog album, from a band with more than enough talent, and a decent amount of potential. The big problem here is that it is simply too chaotic, confused, and jumbled for its own good. At times, one might be tricked into believing that this is an intentional effect; for example, in the opening track 'memorie', perhaps it has been done to evoke a sense of the tangled mess that memories can become. But, even if this is the case, I feel its execution was unsuccessful. For one thing, the jumbled nature of the track detracts from the fact that, at over 12 minutes long, we are in prog epic territory here. Instead, one is given more a sense of multiple 30-second long tracks glued together. And this confusion runs through the album. Even in the style of instrumentation, there is something of a clash, with the guitarist half the time imagining himself to be in a metal band, whilst the keyboardist does his best impression of Keith Emerson. It doesn't fit. But there are moments. This isn't a band without talent, and there are, in virtually every song, moments where they do come together coherently, and manage to pack something of an emotional punch, making this an album not without some merit. The problem, then, is that one is ultimately left feeling that one has listened to a long series of little pieces of music by a collection of talented individuals, rather than an album by a great and cohesive prog band. Given more time playing together, maybe this will improve. Certainly, not a band to dismiss totally when it comes to whether to check out their other releases. As a result, I give this album 2.5/5, rounding up to 3.

The second album by 90s Italian heavy prog outfit A PIEDI NUDI, "Creazione" is a manic offering - other reviews have mentioned similarities with KING CRIMSON and while it is true there are moments of a Crimson-esque mad intricacy I would downplay linking the two as much as others seem to. There are a billion movements within each song here and A Piedi Nudi do not often take the time to fully develop any of them.

The first and longest track, 'Memorie', is representative of the album as a whole in that often there appears to be a kind of identity crisis within the band as to what kind of music they are trying to make. Cristian Chinaglia on keyboards has a taste for the mental and almost psychedelic whilst Gardinale's guitar style gets stuck in heavier, more traditional prog metal textures. The song as a result switches between bouts of each and they don't seem to really cohere together very much. As a result the song seems at points disjointed and the flow between its countless movements can be inscrutable. That said, there are some great moments of compromise between the two and it becomes clear by the end that Gardinale is a more versatile player than he can seem.

'Partenza' is more consistent and moves seamlessly from the playful to the serious, with some nice guitar and organ interaction in the process. Another point to note here is the odd inclusion of a dedicated french horn player in the band, which (when he actually plays instead of just sitting twiddling his thumbs!) adds a rich and unusual depth to the madness. Similarly, in the last section of the track the drummer downs his sticks and picks up...a flute! It's just one of a number of pastoral twists that give the album the occasional strange acid-trip-medieval-court edge seen on the cover art.

'Lungo il Sentiero' starts similarly and then takes a giant sidestep into distorted guitars and heavy metal rhythms. The shift between the two is done well but I'm not sure where it was meant to go given that within a minute it's disappeared without trace back into where is was before. The opening minutes of 'Regina Del Torrente' are nice and intricate, with meandering piano balancing out the heaviness nicely and a crimsony guitar moment thrown in too. There's some more fast guitarwork going on in 'Dea Delle Rocce Signore Del Vent' and 'Creazione' which have a similar manic feel to most of the other songs. All the songs here seem to have a stock starting point of fast and heavy which the band do diverge from in a variety of interesting ways (such as the minute's showcase of more paced guitarwork at the end of 'Creazione') but always ultimately return to. 'Nuova Vita' is the maddest track of all, not sure how to describe it, it borders on the bizarre with lazy vocals and frantic discordant synths very uncomfortably juxtaposed.

I haven't mentioned the vocals much, they often seem to be the weakest point of the album, though the vocalist is also the drummer AND flautist so I don't suppose you can expect him to be amazingly specialised- maybe this is just an Italian style choice but he seems to be.. er... 'limited' in his choice of notes(!) He comes into his own more when there's not as much else going on, such as in 'Memorie' after the 8 minute mark and especially in the gentler bonus track, 'La Ballerina', a nice and almost traditional-sounding song, perfectly pleasant with pretty guitar harmonics but completely at odds with the rest of the album.

Overall a mixed album in both quality and design- clever and intricate at points and with moments of great cohesion and occasional clarity, but I think you'd need to be off your meds for a while to think you were appreciating it fully!