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We are great.
The problem is that we Italians, musically speaking, underestimate ourselves too much. We have accomplished great things, musical masterpieces in all genres: from pop, electronic, hard rock, singer-songwriter, beat, opera, and everything you can think of up to progressive. That genre for the few, but it had so many groups and fans. Italy was among the few countries in Europe whose charts included albums considered today as difficult and non-commercial. We listened (we are the country that first regarded Genesis as rock '70 deities, making them rich and famous), learned, and subsequently created an Italian prog on par with foreign ones with enormous international critical success. Le Orme entered the charts in England, Pfm was produced by the same as King Crimson, and so on.
In short, we were great.
Then the situation got out of hand, as it did for everyone worldwide, and the 1980s market arrived... but that's history.
In 1972, the first self-titled album by Banco Del Mutuo Soccorso was released in Italy. One of our greatest bands that, besides debuting with an astonishingly beautiful debut album, also composed a six-minute suite titled "R.I.P (Requiescant in pace)", memorable and perfect.
The perfect intersection between the Italian and international aspect of progressive. A song in which the group's nationality is explicit but, in its structure, refers to abroad, just as the entire Italian-prog movement does.
It starts with an organ, guitar, bass, and drums intro with very baroque sound and a frenetic rhythm. Francesco Di Giacomo's powerful vocals enter, supporting a text that talks about war.
An ancient war, of swords and spears, which therefore takes up a past perfectly supported by the baroque sound of this song. What makes this suite perfect is precisely the perfect union between words and music, thus creating in the listener the right images that transport us to a distant and visionary world.
A musical painting.
A masterpiece.
We Italians know how to write lyrics and have always taken them seriously. This is also why we are great and do not fool those who listen to us.
The song continues with a guitar solo with lowered volumes in the King Crimson style, the exact musical sensation of a moment between life and death. The solo takes us back to the intro and another verse similar to the first, but interrupted by the fantastic "VECHIO SOLDATO". From here, a beautiful and moving piano section accompanies the powerful, melancholic, and poetic vocals in a perfect interpretation.
The words are beautiful, and the emotion is very high. The instruments join in as a march until the ending "TO PUSH YOU BEYOND, TO DISCOVER WHAT ONLY GOD KNOWS", which accompanies the song to the finale, reprising the baroque sounds of the beginning.
The track will not be a single from the album but will be published in an 1980 EP titled "Il Ragno/Rip".
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