dreamwarrior

And the Hungarians After Crying? Let's not forget them...

You're right, Neapolitan user responds with 5 hearts...

Standards, you always hear flattering judgments about them. The cover is very "sabbathian"…
Moonloop, do you know the story about the Beatles when they masked themselves to avoid being recognized? :-)

But the quality of the final product is a given for the success of an album, not the only factor, but undoubtedly an important one. And we’re not just talking about the quality of the production or the recording, but precisely about the inspiration that was lacking in the vast majority of Italian bands. But let’s be honest, would you compare the best thing done by Strana Officina with the worst thing done by Saxon? And what about Death SS, without makeup, worms, and minced meat—what were they? On their records, they were unbearable, including Steve Sylvester's screams. And I don’t even want to bring up Mercyful Fate or King Diamond…

Ridiculous and ridiculous...

The quality of the musicians is undeniable; the Italians have always been top-notch. However, the productions were horrible, and many of those records sounded like they were recorded with one of those Fisher-Price tape recorders. We had a spectacular progressive tradition, on par if not superior to the English one, but when it came to metal, we were light-years away, both in terms of resources and the culture of the genre. You might be wondering who Beppe Riva is. Well, Riva is the greatest metal journalist Italy has ever had, someone who can make you emotional just by writing a review of a Manowar album. His famous interview with the Death SS took place at night in a cemetery. Do a search on Google; his writings are still available online.

Look, you’re good, I say this with the awareness of the fact, but you can't elevate every metal album produced in Italy in the '80s to a masterpiece. During those years, many of the domestic productions were literally pathetic, whether due to recording quality or because the ideas were derivative, but in the worst sense of the term. Each of the bands you mentioned was only a distant relative of the models that came from England or America, and even the so-called "greats" like Death SS or Vanadium were hardly anything if compared to their foreign cousins. One of the first truly noteworthy albums was produced in the '90s by Time Machine, "Galileo," which, although limited by subpar recording quality, hinted at good ideas. And the first two albums by Rhapsody, yes, those very ones, produced the best work ever done in Italy in the metal scene up to that point. Anything else is largely negligible. Trust me, I’m telling you this as someone who still gets emotional reading some old articles by Beppe Riva.

I mean, do you even know who Savatage are???? I mean, what do they have in common with Ligabue? I already don't see any connection with Neil Young and Deep Purple, but if you asked him directly, he wouldn't know who Savatage are...

You are right to emphasize the influence that Kansas have had on the prog-metal scene. Just think that Dream Theater literally plagiarized their song The Wall, building their suite of Six Degrees on top of it...

In the meantime, a warm welcome back to Jet, who hasn't been around these pages for quite a while. So, usually, those who denigrate Malmsteen are often those who have never played an instrument, just as it is said for those who praise him. I think no well-prepared guitarist would ever dream of spitting on the Swede, nor would they prudently elevate him as the greatest guitarist of all time. Malmsteen was an innovator of metal guitar: an endless series of guitarists draw inspiration from him in their phrasing and sounds. Malmsteen has nothing to do with blues, jazz, fusion, or anything that isn’t metal. As for Malmsteen the composer: I think he is less important compared to Malmsteen the guitarist, also because excluding the first album and a handful of songs scattered here and there, he has never written anything that will be remembered. He is a figure that definitely needs to be scaled down, but from there to consider him "crap," there's a long way.