TERRA IN BOCCA

Although dating back to 1964 and producing a string of hit singles in the Italian beat scene which even found them playing with The Beatles in 1965, the Milan based I GIGANTI are best known for this early Italian concept album TERRA IN BOCCA - POESIA DI UN DELITO (Earth / ground / soil in Mouth - Poetry of a Crime) of progressive rock that featured a rock opera that accused the Mafia of a water war in Sicily. A remarkable task considering as late as 1969 the band was still stuck in the early 60s on its second album "Mille Idee Dei Giganti." Somehow the band bypassed the psychedelic rock middle road and crafted a beautiful prog album before most of the Italian scene had gotten started.

Virtually nothing from I GIGANTI's beat years survived in the complete makeover with the only exception being some of the vocal harmonies between the four members with drummer Sergio Maria's distinct bass vocals standing out. This complete transformation into progressive rock was mainly due to guitarist / vocalist Giacomo Di Martino initiating this most telling tale of Italy's public enemy #1. He virtually wrote all the music himself. The album also featured seven guest musicians although two were uncredited at the time. The storyline revolves around a 16-year old boy and his young lover at odds with the Mafia forces that were using water wars to keep Sicily under their power.

While the album was one of the first of the more complex progressive rock albums to emerge from Italy, the style of how it was presented was prescient in how the scene would play out. The album featured eleven tracks which all connected thus making it a whole album experiences but yet separated by two side-long suites. The music featured what many would consider the classic PFM or Banco style based in classical music with organs, acoustic guitars, mellotrons and uncommon knotty time signature deviations. The vocalists were operatic in conversation with an electric guitar and due to the story a few bits of spoken word narration. Like most of the Italian scene I GIGANTI performed exclusively in the Italian language but even if the story escapes you, the music will draw you in.

The music in tandem with the lyrical storytelling will be lost on non-Italian speakers but the music alone is well worth the price of admission. The album opens with an instrumental overture and then proceeds to use the music to evoke the proper emotional responses to the tale of the Mafia who has killed the boy who was trying to expose their money making endeavors. The album continues with the boy's father seeking revenge and lots of dramatic twists and turns that follow. The music while mostly oriented on the keyboards finds a larger than life shifting of styles and dynamics with influences from classical, rock, jazz and English and French prog. A quick perusing of the band's previous two beat albums only makes this one more impressive as the sophistication was off the charts. The album has been compared to "Jesus Christ Superstar."

Despite being at the height of their career as one of Italy's greatest pop rock band's I GIGANTI took a huge risk releasing TERRA IN BOCCA and unfortunately lost. The album was played a single time on the radio but then was banned due to censorship regarding anything Mafia related thus leaving this one an underground obscurity until it was rediscovered in 1989 and re-released on CD on the Vinyl Magic label. The power of the Mafia was so strong that it literally ended the band's career after TERRA IN BOCCA was released. It's interesting that the punk rockers who came later in the decade were put off by prog's escapist themes that weren't grounded in the real world. Apparently they never heard this Italian gem that was prog in musical structure but about as punk as it gets in its scathing review of the political situations in the homeland. While not the absolute best Italian example of prog, this album is widely considered one of the most important albums of Italian rock.