Progarchives, the progressive rock ultimate discography

FALENA

Rock Progressivo Italiano • Italy


From Progarchives.com, the ultimate progressive rock music website

Falena picture
Falena biography
Founded in Rocca di Pappa, Italy in 2003

FALENA began life in 2003 with founder members Andrea TRINCA (bass), Emiliano SELLATI (vocals) and Alessandro FUSACCHIA (guitar). From inception they have maintained a busy live activity in and around Rome, and their accumulated musical influences and backgrounds have seen them variously labelled as Alt-Rock, Progressive and Indie. The early line-up also included drummer Domenico FERRI and guitarist Marco RUSIGNUOLO.

With the above five-strong line-up they recorded their full-length debut ''Impressioni'' in 2007. This album finds the band shooting out a work of guitar oriented hard rock contaminated with some germs of prog. FERRI subsequently left the band at the tail end of 2007, to be replaced by Rossano ACCIARI the following year.

2009 saw the arrival of keyboardist-come-flautist Marco PESCHI who not only augmented the band in terms of personnel, he also seems to have winkled out the band's true prog essence. They began a new period of recording and in 2013 released the long-planned second album ''L'Idiota'', which reveals an ironclad work of RPI. Although RUSIGNUOLO played on the album, by the time of its release he had parted company the band.

FALENA continues as a five-piece with regular live gigs and promotions on local radio. They are also working on their third album, an ambitious sounding project under the working title ''Frankenstein Opera Rock''. ''Impressioni'' can be streamed via the band's Myspace page. ''L'Idiota'' should be well received by fans of heavy RPI and the CD is available directly from the band.

- seventhsojourn

See also: HERE

FALENA Videos (YouTube and more)


Showing only random 3 | Search and add more videos to FALENA

Buy FALENA Music


FALENA discography


Ordered by release date | Showing ratings (top albums) | Help Progarchives.com to complete the discography and add albums

FALENA top albums (CD, LP, MC, SACD, DVD-A, Digital Media Download)

4.00 | 1 ratings
Impressioni
2007
3.94 | 14 ratings
L'Idiota
2013
3.22 | 13 ratings
Una Seconda Strana Sensazione
2019

FALENA Live Albums (CD, LP, MC, SACD, DVD-A, Digital Media Download)

FALENA Videos (DVD, Blu-ray, VHS etc)

FALENA Boxset & Compilations (CD, LP, MC, SACD, DVD-A, Digital Media Download)

FALENA Official Singles, EPs, Fan Club & Promo (CD, EP/LP, MC, Digital Media Download)

FALENA Reviews


Showing last 10 reviews only
 Una Seconda Strana Sensazione by FALENA album cover Studio Album, 2019
3.22 | 13 ratings

BUY
Una Seconda Strana Sensazione
Falena Rock Progressivo Italiano

Review by TCat
Special Collaborator Honorary Collaborator / Retired Admin

3 stars Falena was formed in 2003, and for the most part, has remained a band with 5 core members, even though a few of them have changed over the years. The three founding members were Andrea Trinca on bass, Emiliano Sellati on vocals and Alessandro Fusacchia on guitar. The band's name is the Italian word for Moth.

In December of 2019, the band released its third full length studio album "Una Seconda Strana Sensazione" (A Second Strange Sensation) with the original founding members joined by Marco Peschi on keyboards, programming and flute, and Rosaano Acciari on drums. This album consists of 14 tracks ranging from about one minute to just over nine minutes for a total run time of over 66 minutes. The album is a concept album which continues to follow the band's anti-hero that goes by the name of Mr. F, a normal man with a complex personality, and the inner conflicts that he deals with.

All of the vocals are in Italian, with the remaining 5 being instrumentals which sometimes contain sound effects or spoken vocals, which are usually short and act more as introductory, transitory and finale tracks. The songs with vocals are lyric heavy and the vocalist is pretty good, evoking the emotion and drama that lovers of RPI expect. The music itself is performed well enough, and there is a good balance of guitar and keyboards with the occasional flair of a flute. The music is a heavy rock sound with some progressive passages. The individual tracks contain some tempo shifts and meter changes, but the music is pretty much your average progressive and hard rock sound. Really, the main thing that sticks out in the overall album is the occasional sound of the flute. Even though it is nothing fancy, it does help bring the album a bit of uniqueness that helps it stand out as being just a notch above the average Hard Rock Progressive sound that tends to be the main style.

The album pretty much follows this pattern with lyric heavy tracks and short intermediary tracks, however, the title track does have longer instrumental sections which gives the musicians some time to do some improvising and free play. There is a bit of variety in the tone of the tracks, some being slow and pensive, but it is mostly upbeat and a bit on the heavy side, but through all of this, nothing really stands out and none of the tracks are really standout tracks either. Overall, it's a pleasant enough listen, but at the end nothing seems to be memorable, groundbreaking or unique, and the recording is not necessarily the best, but it is at least tolerable. The compositions keep you interested enough, and after more exposure, tend to show a bit more individuality, but even then, it's all great music that you have heard before. Because of some decent passages and the quality of the compositions, the album stands just a bit over an average rating of 3.5, but in this case, it rounds down to mostly average. It's good, but nothing really special.

 L'Idiota by FALENA album cover Studio Album, 2013
3.94 | 14 ratings

BUY
L'Idiota
Falena Rock Progressivo Italiano

Review by andrea
Prog Reviewer

4 stars Falena began life in 2002 in Rocca di Papa, near Rome, on the initiative of Andrea Trinca, Emiliano Sellati and Alessandro Fusacchia, influenced by the alternative rock scene and progressive rock. In 2007 they released a first self produced album full of raw energy, Impressioni. After some line up changes and a good live activity on the local scene, in 2013 the band released another self produced album, L'idiota (The idiot), with a line up featuring founder members Emiliano Sellati (vocals), Alessandro Fusacchia (guitar) and Andrea Trinca (bass), along with Marco Rusignuolo (guitar), Marco Peschi (keyboards, synthesizers, flute) and Rossano Acciari (drums). The overall sound here is more refined and mature than on the previous work and the band showcase really good song-writing skills blending hard rock and calmer passages, ethereal atmospheres and disquieting moods. The strong theatrical attitude of the vocalist and lyricist Emiliano Sellati adds brilliant touches of colour to the musical fabric with excellent results. There are no liner notes but all the tracks are in some way linked and tell in a poetical way about a daily diet of despair, a metaphorical fall into a void where your personality and your sanity are in danger.

The dark opener "L'idiota" (The idiot) evokes in music and words the obscure ghosts of madness. Here madness is nothing but a scream without voice, sentences and inhibitions coming out from deeds without ardour leading to days without light. Heaps of hourglasses mark the life of men who can't fly towards the sun and get lost into a black void, victims of their false illusions, submerged by morals that prevent them from understanding what freedom really is. The fools have wings too thin to fly and they end up to dream of becoming what they already are...

"Il destino è coperto da..." (Destiny is covered by...) is another track featuring an uneasy mood where the borders between nightmare and reality get blurred. Try to imagine a rag covering your destiny, then a sudden cut in the rag lets the light in... There is someone who can control all your activities, you're flying like a bee in a swarm, but you feel as if you were drunk on your ego... "No place is so far / There are always imperceptible voices...".

"La ricerca del nulla" (The search for nothing) describes in music and words a pointless inner quest within the boundaries of order to dig out your hidden impulsions. Soon space and time become meaningless concepts... Along the way you'll meet voiceless giants proud of their greediness, keepers of shadows, untied dogs and other strange creatures, you'll be mislead by peculiar dreams and mirages, you'll be deceived by strange images and powerful illusions but in the end you won't find what you're looking for... "We're looking for nothing / We're looking for...".

"Una strana sensazione" (A strange sensation) is another tense track describing a kind of emotional short-circuit that causes a sudden dizziness and a fall down the stairs while the borders between obsession and logic disappear... "I will be a flower of paper / Without stem nor soil...".

"Cibo di uomini" (Food of men) features a slower pace and a hallucinatory mood. The visionary strength of the lyrics conjures up surreal images describing an anthropophagic rite of daily cowardice, a banquet where men feed on other men and brains are on sale. It's a bold metaphor suggesting the absurdity of struggling for power and money... "I will love the Autumn that knocks down the world / Between the murmurs of automatons dressed for the party / And that innocence which turns on every truth of mine / Feed of men... Men...".

"Es!" is about a tearing inner conflict, a war where the real personality of a man is at stake and risks to get suffocated by an external mechanism. The music and the hermetic, evocative lyrics depict brains assembled and disassembled on production lines to celebrate the victory of impersonality. You can't ignore what you can't explain, to survive you've got to enter labyrinths of snow where everything reappears and a drop of colour or a sun ray is all you need to remember who you are.

The final track "Spazi vuoti" (Empty spaces) features recitative vocals and ethereal atmospheres. While the words flow away in a measured cadence, every now and again Pholas Dactylus come to mind... Finally this strange kind of trip through silent, empty spaces surrounded by the ghosts of madness comes to an end. Eventually you can hear a sound and you realize that you're not insane after all!

On the whole I think that this is a very interesting work... Anyway, have a try and judge by yourselves! By the way, the album is available in digital edition on the main digital stores while for the physical copy you have to ask the band.

 L'Idiota by FALENA album cover Studio Album, 2013
3.94 | 14 ratings

BUY
L'Idiota
Falena Rock Progressivo Italiano

Review by seventhsojourn
Special Collaborator Honorary Collaborator

4 stars There's a fair amount of incoming due from the RPI in the coming weeks, and those people who are keen on the heavy Italian prog rock should definitely have Falena on their radar. The band has been around since 2003 and in fact released their debut album 'Impressioni' (as a Myspace stream) in 2007. While they have hitherto hobnobbed with hard rock, they generally seem to have had a bit of an identity crisis and by their own admission haven't really been able to get a handle on their own sound.

However if the years have been spent trying to harness their individual musical backgrounds (alt-rock, indie, prog) into a coherent whole, with 'L'Idiota' they have a new impetus and those same influences have driven the band to conceive a work that in a trice has seen their name inscribed on RPI. 'L'Idiota' has cut the bindings, Lazarus-like, that previously restrained them from the sight of prog

There's a semblance of a concept too; the album presents a collection of songs that together draw a picture of the follies of human nature - mental disorder, human suffering and other dismal imaginings. This might even be seen as a metaphor for the band itself and that idea of not knowing where they belong, but let's just park that argument and keep the focus of attention on the music.

The nature of the lyrics be as they may, but the band relays these ideas through the medium of great muckle power chords, fire-eater vocals, and a rhythm section that's as tight as a duck's erchie. And with the keyboardist doubling up on flute, there are well-kenned RPI elements enough. By-the-bye, don't be looking to this album for help with your circadian rhythms or sleep disorder; it's a noisy affair so you'll not be needing your jim-jams with this one, that's for certain.

As noted above, things are about as busy as they get in the Villa just now with some devilishly good bands in the pipeline. As a surety, Auld Nick will get frostbite before the RPI juggernaut runs out of hot new bands. Okay, so there aren't pure hundreds of artists being added but Falena is just one of several catechumens that the RPI faithful will want to acquaint themselves with. And in spite of its self- defeating title, 'L'Idiota' is no prog rock folly.

Thanks to seventhsojourn for the artist addition. and to Quinino for the last updates

Copyright Prog Archives, All rights reserved. | Legal Notice | Privacy Policy | Advertise | RSS + syndications

Other sites in the MAC network: JazzMusicArchives.com — jazz music reviews and archives | MetalMusicArchives.com — metal music reviews and archives

Donate monthly and keep PA fast-loading and ad-free forever.