Ritmo Tribale
Mantra

The period between the late '80s and the first half of the '90s was filled with important albums in the crossover scene that started to dominate the charts across the globe.

People like Faith No More, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Living Colour, to name perhaps the most representative ones, occupied a massive amount of space in both specialized and general magazines, filled arenas with fans, and garnered numerous prestigious metal records that quickly took them out of the underground band confines to becoming known to the masses. From those years, crucial albums included “The Real Thing” and “Angel Dust” by Mike Patton's band, “Blood Sugar Sex Magik” from the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and “Time’s Up” by Living Colour. I feel inclined to recommend to those who love such albums and, in general, the contaminated music of those years, “Mantra” by the Milanese Ritmo Tribale.

Ritmo Tribale, although receiving a good response from critics and the audience in the first half of the nineties, thanks to the release of “Mantra” and “Psychorsonica”, never achieved the success they deserved. This was also because their direct and unadorned contaminated rock was aimed at an audience that drooled over Litfiba (who were already in a declining phase of inspiration) and useless entities like Ligabue.
Formed in the mid-80s, their sound slowly evolved from punk and hardcore to a crossover with a clear funky influence, heavily indebted to the creation of Anthony Kiedis, all built on a robust hard rock foundation that’s engaging and compelling.

“Mantra”, perhaps their best work, is a complete piece both musically and compositionally and certainly deserves a greater recognition than the oblivion Ritmo Tribale ended up in, partly due to the departure from the group after the release of “Psychorsonica” of Edda, a singer highly skilled and endowed with a warm and unique voice.
The album’s central theme is the dream, seen in an intimate and possessive concept to seek refuge (“Take your dream and leave mine alone, this is my game, this is me”, “Madonna, what a dream, I can't say no”) and, in general, the relationship between man and all that is elusive, not materially knowable like religion (“Is there really a power you don’t see?, is there really the mystery you believe in?, is there really the absolute at your feet?”) and one's own soul (“I wish for a body made of antimatter, with a heart that detaches from the earth..”).

Musically, this “Mantra” is characterized by a wide variety of sounds and styles. It begins with the very hard “Assoluto”, marked by an obsessive guitar riff in pure heavy style, and continues with the grunge-flavored hard rock of “Madonna” and “La mia religione”, with the blood-pumping, Zeppelin-like rock of “Hanno tradito” and “Sire”, with the punkish “Ti detesto II”, with a powerful cover of Rino Gaetano's “Il cielo è sempre più blu”, with the psychedelic “Antimateria” whose intro vaguely recalls “Tomorrow’s World” by Killing Joke, with the funky style of “Buonanotte”.
But the most intense moments of the album are to be found in the more mellow and melodic songs such as the bluesy “Amara” and, especially, with the refined and delicate sounds of “Sogna” and “La verità”.

In conclusion, not much more can be said but that this is an album to discover for a band to be re-evaluated, especially for those who lived firsthand the rise of crossover in the '90s.