Hobbit
Per La Contea

LA RECENSIONE

What I am reviewing is, in my opinion, the best album from a band with a more integralist mindset, one of the most active ever (formed in the mid-90s) with several albums published. Despite their success in Italy and Europe (especially in Spain), musically they don't have much to say. Always inspired by the Tolkienian imagination, following in the footsteps of many others by now (starting with the name and, in this case, the album title).
As already mentioned, it is the best of the five complete albums released to date; and considering the rating I give the album, that's saying something. All their albums consist of 2 or 3 nice songs, the rest are just fillers put there just to say, for example, "Let's write a song about the 300 Spartan heroes" or "let's write a touching song about the Via Rasella bombing" and so on, but with rather questionable results. The impression is that their merit is not purely musical, never an anthem or a noteworthy song (just clumsy attempts to do so), but only "historical" since they have never taken breaks from concerts and over twenty years have already released five albums, a rare feat for a band of alternative music.

The genre can be classified as rock/alternative (alternative in the broadest sense) in the early years (up to about 2010) to moving more towards oi! in recent years. This album is the only one played with not too distorted guitars, rather, a nice clean like Jimi Hendrix (if you'll allow me the comparison), while musically very close to our own Ligabue from Buon Compleanno Elvis. Let's start by immediately stating which are the best of the album so we don't dwell too long: "Radio 25 Aprile" which speaks of the rejection of this anniversary, "S.A.F." which is a tribute to the auxiliary women of the RSI, "Notti" which is the only "apolitical" song that's very pleasant to listen to ("And while an old song by the Compagnia plays in the car"), "...Perché" which speaks of the contradictions of today's society (to be guilty of "recentism" as Wikipedia does: a sort of preemptive Vannacci book) and then the others are just fillers to me and I'm not going to describe them.

It is not among my favorites, and I am only reviewing it because the band is very well known in the area, but honestly, I do not consider it an important listen neither musically nor, to be frank, even content-wise: they are just the same boring concepts repeated for decades now, a fact that unites all alternative music production of the last 10/15 years. Not a thoughtful work, but just an attempt to write something memorable without any basic ideas.