BANCO DEL MUTUO SOCCORSO

Along with Premiata Forneria Marconi, Area or Le Orme, another excellent exponent of the Italian scene of Progressive Rock of the early seventies was Banco del Mutuo Soccorso whose debut album was absolutely outstanding: while Vittorio and Gianni Nocenzi filled the album with the most amazing classic piano and keyboards dancing through strong rock lines, sensual jazz and classical arrangements, the powerful guitar, bass and drums patterns played respectively by Marcello Todaro, Renato D'Angelo and Pier Luigi Calderoni gave the album a very solid and overwhelming structure but definitely, the most iconic detail of this record and, the whole discography of BMS was the unique voice of Francesco di Giacomo, of course he was not the only singer in the world capable of reaching those tones but for Progressive (or any other kind of) Rock it was something absolutely innovative.

The homonymous album of Banco del Mutuo Soccorso contains six pieces: three of them could pass as an introduction, an interlude and a short closure because of their lengths but non of them is a weak track, all of them are as marvelous as the long epic pieces of the record; "R.I.P." is a very powerful song in which we can appreciate Francesco di Giacomo's voice for the very first time, "Metamorfosi" is almost completely instrumental with a very short sung part reaching the end, the amazing introduction contains an exquisite piano line and dominant rock elements. "Il giardino del mago" is the longest song on the record, and honestly, is one of the greatest songs ever composed in any Rock record from the seventies, its rhythem changes constantly without losing the idea of what the music is about.

The short songs (as I said before) are not at all weak: "In volo" works as a fabulous introduction with very calm keyboards; "Passaggio" is a beautiful hapsichord solo that introduces the great "Metamorfosi" and "Traccia" is a wonderful piano piece that closes the album in a very elegant way. Banco del Mutuo Soccorso kept launching very good albums through the seventies, just in the same year of this first release "Darwin!" Was launched and it was a more mature and conceptual oriented kind of record and "Io sono nato libero" continued with that style in 1973 but to me, "Banco del Mutuo Soccorso" was the greatest record they never published because it was totally unprecedented.

Tutto un vero capolavoro, bravo, amici!!

SONG RATING: In volo, 5 R.I.P. 5 Passaggio, 5 Metamorfosi, 5 Il giardino del mago, 5 Traccia, 5

AVERAGE: 5

PERCENTAGE: 100

ALBUM RATING: 5 stars

I ranked this album #11 on my TOP 100 favorite Progressive Rock albums of all time.

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