Linea 77
Too Much Happiness Makes Kids Paranoid

"Too Much Happiness.." marks the beginning of the Linea 77 phenomenon. Even before the commercial breakthrough, before an evolution that perhaps didn't quite suit their sound, before MTV... there they were: five guys thrown into the sleepy suburbs of Turin and forced to live there. Truth be told, the entertainment options aren't many, and they do what they can: some drug use, hitting the discos, dancing to not-so-pleasant music until dawn, and maybe, if you're lucky, you find a girl who'll let you... Oppressed by monotony and bored by an environment always the same, they decide, like good citizens, for a drastic change. Literally, the unanimous decision is "Let's make some healthy noise".

Let's be clear, "Too Much.." is not at the level of the more mature and inspired "Ketchup Suicide", which in my opinion remains Linea's best expression. After that, they lost their way a bit. Honestly, I still find it hard to understand in which "where" their music went off track. I mean, Deftones opted for some electro-dark, Korn and System of a Down (alas, them too) clashed with pop. Linea? Who knows. The desire to experiment, to revolutionize their sound was admirable, yes. But listening again to the first two works, one realizes that this shift might have been better avoided.

Hit the Play button, and "Touch" starts. You don't even have time to say "Damn, this is the same start as a Van Hal...", when a hardcore blast hits your eardrum full on. More than a gentle touch, "Touch" feels like a missile to the teeth, with that initial graceless scream and that "PamPamPamPamPamPam-PAPAPAPA-PamPam.." of guitar, so simple yet so powerful and immediate it leaves you stunned. The rhythm section is made up of a very present bass, and a precise and fast drum. Between screams and howls, between melody and rage, the two voices alternate and overlap, completing a picture that "can't get any more pogo than this". The album continues like a solid mass of hardcore-crossover, drawing heavily from metal and the aggressive side of the early works labeled Deftones.

"Meat" is more elaborate: after an emphatic intro, there's a melodic and fast chorus that alternates with a powerful yet pleasant riff, featuring a nice duet between Emo and Nitto, the two voices. "90'" also stands out, a track completely in Italian, a swing between semi-rap verses and shouted refrains, an adrenaline-pumping and fizzy mix, even if not the most original. "Tutto quello che ho sempre voluto" will remain for me their most beautiful song. Introduced by a distorted and malicious arpeggio, it features a nostalgic and disenchanted lyric, only to explode into a fast chorus. The ending is fantastic, a hard chaos before which our ears can only bow, bent by the might of this sound.

"Too Much...", self-produced, marks the beginning of the most important Italian crossover band, notable in the studio, destructive live. The Linea of the past, distant light years from the new sound, distant light years from their new image. Before they were called Those-Who-Sang-With-The-Subsonica, there were the Linea 77. And deep down, we like to remember them like this.