July 22, 2017

Barabba - Canti dal Vangelo Secondo Barabba (1977, LP, Italy)

While early RPI bands loved their British heroes, particularly the dark, difficult, and heavy textures of VDGG and Deep Purple in my opinion, they took the influences of those bands and created highly diverse and original material throughout the following years. As the site genre definition notes there's a unique sound stamp, musical depth, and independence to the RPI bench which becomes apparent after you listen to the hundreds of lesser known albums...get past believing that PFM alone represent RPI. The genre is very far from wannabe British clone. Here is another of so many cases in point. Barabba is an obscure Turin-based project spearheaded by Circus 2000 guitarist Marcello "Spooky" Quartarone and features musicians from Arti&Mestieri, Living Life, and Venegoni &Co. Quartarone's music was married to lyrics written by students in an attempt to create a conceptual album based on Gospel themes. Little other information is out there concerning the project, though be sure to review Todd's bio for what he dug up. (Finnforest)