The live second half really steals the show
BENJAMIN MILER | Veneta, Oregon | 08/29/2006
(4 out of 5 stars)
"Although New Trolls had released their share of albums since 1968 (and singles since 1967), it was with 1971's Concerto Grosso Per 1 that the band was finally established in prog circles. That album features one side of rock with classical orchestrations (courtesy of Luis Enriquez Bacalov), and the other half consisting of an extended jam (and a rather unnecessarily long drum solo). In 1972, they had some lineup changes, in the keyboards and bass department, in comes keyboardist Maurizio Salvi and bassist Frank Laugelli. They followed up Concerto Grosso Per 1 with a two album set, the first set a studio offering, the second disc a live disc. The first disc consists of mellower pieces, many of them acoustic, with some ballads and classical-influences. "Searching" is the opening number and has a rather acoustic psychedelic feel. "Percival" continues in the acousic vein, where "In St. Peter's Day" shows more of a classical influence (I'm pretty certain, coming from Maurizio Salvi's keyboard playing), not to mention some use of synth and Eminent 310. The second half of the album is nothing short of amazing, however. The band gets much heavier, into Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin territory, but without forsaking the prog rock elements. "Intro" starts off with a drum solo, before the band gets in to jazzy territory. "Bright Lights" shows the hard rock side of the band, with some really high pitched vocals, reminding me of Rob Halford of Judas Priest. In fact I really get a kick off this song, because of the vocals, to think Nico Di Palo was sounding like a vocalist from a band who had yet to release any albums. In fact I really get a kick of the high notes he hits throughout this album (including the more mellow, acoustic numbers found on the studio half). The next pice, "Muddy Madalein" sounds like Deep Purple teaming up with Jethro Tull, with Ian Anderson-like flutes and Ian Gillan-like vocals. The last piece is an 18 minute killer piece called "Lying Here". Starts off with some rather mellow organ, but after a few minutes the band really gets intense, with Nico Di Palo giving his share of distortion and feedback on his guitar, plus some really great jams throughout. No drum solos here. The audience really went wild to this music, which was all-new material. The cheering reminds me of the height of Beatlemania circa 1964, except the cheering wasn't from screaming 12 year old girls. That's the one complaint, the cheering often drowned out the wonderful music. Perhaps the other biggest problem throughout the whole album is the vocals are in English, and for some reason, the English isn't so great, which is really weird, because the English was excellent on Concerto Grosso Per 1. They wanted to sing entirely in English in order to break the international market, basically they beat PFM by one year to it. But while PFM succeeded in cracking the international market (because they had Greg Lake sign them to his Manticore label, and hence no problem with international distribution, including the United States), New Trolls obviously had no luck, as no international label had interest in this album (at least, not until many years later when the Japanese started reissuing Italian prog albums). This album also started showing the cracks in the band, because the studio half showed that Vittorio De Scalzi prefered prog rock, while the live half showing Nico Di Palo preferring hard rock. This came to a head with their next album, UT, where the band broke up and in the ashes came Ibis and New Trolls Atomic System.
This album is often ignored, being sandwiched between Concerto Grosso Per 1 and UT, and it is a bit of an uneven album, but there's enough excellent material to make this album worth having."
