Civico 23
Work In Prog

In the last two decades, it seems that progressive rock has truly been reborn in our beautiful country. Many bands have emerged, bringing back a great musical era like that of the '70s, even though sometimes these works are mostly sold to genre enthusiasts. One such band is undoubtedly Civico 23: a young and promising underground band from Rome that navigates between the typical sounds of hard rock and prog.

This great CD, which I bought almost by chance in a small shop, reveals that sometimes someone wants to revive those beautiful historical and avant-garde roots and break away from the usual musical norms that the music market dictates today as if it were a Fascist Dictatorship.

"Work In Prog" is an album that gets straight to the point with its hard and fun content. It can be said that it is not an extreme work, but new young fans might like it for its tense yet catchy sounds and interesting lyrics with a humorous verve.

The tracks on "Work In Prog" are 7, including 2 bonus tracks, totaling about 40 minutes. Even though the spirit is one of the past, the content is clear and immediate: the single, if we want to call it that, echoes the classic Italian rock song and is "Open Eyed Dream." Certainly, the title is in English, but the entire structure of the song recalls Italian melody and thus today's local bands. Beautiful and delightful.

The other 4 tracks represent the warm part of the album and can easily be divided into 2 categories: those with a more progressive and cerebral spirit with clear vintage '70s nuances like "Il Cavaliere Illuso" and "L'ultimo Grido Di Galeria," intricate and imposing, the first with a medieval fantasy stamp and the second with a psychedelic mix. And the other two that come from a more hard rock matrix and are "Urano" and "Paura Infinita," amusing and adrenaline-pumping.

The 2 bonus tracks are a small addition to the work done: a meditative poem by the vocalist and the last one that recalls the opening of the album. If we talk about the product on a material level, it is well made, with texts and drawings by the band, not to mention the cover that recalls the good old records that fans loved to collect.

The band is very young, twenty-year-olds who tend to focus more on a niche market rather than the major-dominated market. But who knows, maybe one day...

On their website, you can find information about their concerts and the news revolving around these young Romans: Joe, Lorenzo, Daniel, Simone, Federico, and Francesco.