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Rating:
THE REVIEW
On Thursday I was reading merciless comments. Young trendsetting critics, just like little hyenas, pounced on the lifeless corpse of a great group dead from exhaustion. Here's the funeral that everyone hoped to celebrate sooner or later. In the land of the Sanremo Festival, another handful of distorted, rebellious, and subversive screamers disappear to the delight of many.
"Despite all this, however, I will buy the CD, maybe just out of respect and consideration for the greatest contemporary Italian rock group." And so I bought it. As soon as I saw it, it struck me... the CD bleeds! The letters are red and dripping down! There's blood in here!
I put it on and it starts... Well, my friends, a five-and-a-half-minute ballad with my heart in my throat and goosebumps. I hope to quickly learn the words by heart so I can shout them out alone in the car in traffic or at night. That's how it makes me feel. One of the most beautiful songs ever written. And the rest? The rest is still goosebumps, heart in throat, anger, despair, love, delirium, and class. Surely even some slight moments of low tension at times, but honestly, as far as I'm concerned, it's a great record.
Personally, I don't love the game of comparisons, obviously, each of us has our own ranking, surely each of us has shouted, jumped, and sweated with Agnelli back when we licked adrenaline and blew out speakers. Today I'm thirty-one, almost ten years older, but with the same anger and strength as back then, the same spasms, the same sickly melancholic love, but everything moves within me differently now and listening to this evolving album, I find myself in it. I hear people saying it's too pop and melodic an album. Well, if half of Italian melodic songs were on this level, we would certainly be a better country today.
To those who dreamed of being a rock star and instead find themselves reviewing albums in their bedroom, I say... come back when you've written something that resembles this, something that bleeds like this.
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Summary by Bot
The reviewer defies negative trends by embracing Afterhours' album with respect and emotion. Praising its raw, heartfelt ballads, the album resonates deeply with both past energy and mature reflection. Despite some melodic moments, the record maintains its powerful rock identity and heartfelt delivery.Tracklist Lyrics Videos
Afterhours
Afterhours is an Italian alternative rock band from Milan led by Manuel Agnelli, active since the mid-1980s and widely cited as influential in the Italian indie/alternative scene.52 Reviews
Other reviews
By SouthMan
Everything sounds heavy, the rhythm has further slowed down, becoming obsessive, devoid of real emotions.
Afterhours missed the mark this time.
By enryka
"The album insinuates itself under the skin, reaches the neuralgic points of the body, and then takes root in the soul."
"Even the sun rises only if it’s convenient."
By ingenuapupattola
I want to memorize every word, every chord, every distortion of this MASTERPIECE.
Don’t let gloom defeat you. Keep it well in mind.
By Aerith
It’s like breathing stagnant air... but letting yourself be taken by Manuel’s voice... you realize that in that melancholy you feel good after all.
The title track is the perfect synthesis of the album: between rock influences and decidedly darker tracks.
By enkrist1
Ballate per Piccole Iene is a small masterpiece brimming with inventiveness, full of rock insights that would fit well on a tough indie album... certainly not Italian.
They have a strength that strikes, being the only ones in Italy proposing rock worthy of being called by that name.
