Metamorfosi

*2023 stock* Another very important chapter of Italian progressive rock must be dedicated to the Roman Metamorfosi, an interesting four-piece group, which mainly revolved around the figure of the excellent keyboardist Enrico Olivieri, accompanied by the singer and flautist Jimmy Spitaleri, by the interesting bassist and guitarist Roberto Turbitosi and by the drummer Gianluca Herygers. Inferno is their second album and comes out in 1973 for the Vedette record company. It is a very interesting reinterpretation of Dante's Divine Comedy in a modern key, with the inclusion of the typical characters of today's society in the context of Dante's hell in circles. Thus we find the loan shark, the drug dealer, the racist, the exploiter, the politicians, all subject to heavy sanctions, denunciation of the evils of society, of which Spitaleri's voice is evocatively the bearer, at times poetic at times super partes, almost embodied in those infernal meanders.

The work of mellotron and keyboards is nothing short of fantastic, with fugues and incursions worthy of the best Italian keyboardists of the time, and never an end in itself. Curious to hear in the short instrumental "Fossa Dei Giganti" a reprise for mellotron of the theme of the American and Russian national anthems. The rhythm section is very effective in wrapping everything up, resulting compact and solemn, especially in some bass passages.