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Review:
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This Italian five piece formation is rooted in 1994
but a few years ago the line-changed radically, only two
founding members survived. On their website I read this
about the music on their debut album entitled La Leggenda
Della Grande Porta: “VIII Strada is a musical workshop where
harmony, sounds and words are forged together to create
songs whose essential aim is to transmit a state of mind
and share emotions with the listener. VIII STRADA is classified
as Progressive Rock but it is strongly influenced by the
various musical tastes and experience of its members”, “An
unmistakable symphonic-classical influence mixed with the
raw energy of rock create the VIII STRADA sound, enriched
by diverse contaminations from worlds, cultures, times and
ages apart”, and “VIII STRADA’s music overcomes the barriers
of categorization and, especially when performed live and
greater contact is established with the audience, the listener
finds it is easily interpreted and emotionally enthralling.
Let's rock !!!”.
- Well, listening to their melodic and accessible music
I conclude that VII Strada indeed rocks, to be more specific,
in general VIII Strada is scouting the borders between Heavy
Progressive and Prog Metal (but fortunately without the
boring cascades of scale-acrobatics) in an exciting way:
very dynamic, powerful, bombastic, lots of shifting moods,
breaks and sensational accellarations, powerful Italian
vocals with passion and a powerhouse rhythm-section. But
the focus is on the sensational guitarwork (propulsive riffs
and lots of fiery, howling and blistering solos), often
in great interplay with the sparkling Grand piano, this
is VIII Strada their trademark and I love it! At some moments
the band plays more mellow featuring warm acoustic guitar,
tender piano and dreamy vocals like in the titletrack and
Laguna Di Giada and the short piece Amencer even contains
a wonderful duet between tango-like piano and classical
guitar. -
Although VIII Strada doesn’t play at the level of other
promising new Italian progrock bands like Il Bacio Delle
Medusa and Pandora, this is an exciting CD to check out
for the Heavy Prog and Prog Metal fans and progheads who
don’t have a problem with harder-edged progrock. And what
a killer guitarplayer!
www.progwalhalla.com
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