Top 5 Italian Prog Rock Albums

Banco Del Mutuo Soccorso - Darwin!

This concept album is based on the life of sociologist and the thoughts of the origins of species, Charles Darwin. Banco doesn't pull any punches with their superior album. They would use ragtime music, haunting oboe sounds, baroque classical music, and harpischord's of the 19th century screeching out from the synths with an operatic rock sound that the original three tenors would get a kick out of.

Premiata Forneria Marconi - Storia Di Un Minuto

PFM were one of the Italian Progsters that Greg Lake of ELP and King Crimson fame enjoyed and he got them signed on their own Prog label Manticore. Their first album is a mixture of 18th century sounds. Their debut album Storia Di Un Minuto (History of a Minute or Story in a Minute) is a mixture of synthesized anthems of fairy tale dances (E' Festa), the stories for September Impressions with a Genesis mellotron style of Impressioni Di Settembre and the two-part epic like folk metal of Dove Quando would almost have an operatic feel that would have the three tenors get a kick out of.


Le Orme - Felona E Sorona Picture the scenery. An Italian version of ELP writing almost a rock opera in two sets in an opera house. More of a outer space rock musical to be more precisely. The story takes place on two diffrent planets. One planet is Felona, who is filled with Joy and Happiness and wants to be free with everybody. The second planet is Sorona, she is filled with sorrow and isolation and filled withdarkness across her home planet. The two planets are with a master who combines the planet in an ultimate climatic showdown as Le Orme fills it up with mellotron limits, moogs going up to the milky way, and Carl Palmer influential drum patterns mixing it up with folky acoustic guitar ballads and Jazz like fusion Bass patterns.


Museo Rosenbach - Zarathustra
A more sinister and darker approach for group doing a concept album based on the book that Frederich Nietzche wrote Thus Spoke Zarathustra, not to be confused with Strauss version of the classical music anthem for 2001. Museo Rosenbach's debut album is a perfect gem for Prog lovers. This shows an italian version that crosses over of King Crimson's first album meets Genesis Nursery Cryme in a dramatic way. You have the 20-minute epic that will send Edgar Allen Poe to write a musical version with Nietzche of House On Haunted Hill with mellotrons that turned evil, Black Sabbath influential guitar sounds mixed with a snarling drum introduction and a Hammond Organ from hell. You might want to play this along with any Horror film and scare the shit out of Trick-or-Treaters with.


Jacula - Tardo Pede In Magiam Versus
Kind of a strange band with a strange title ain't it? But for Keyboard and Guitar player Antonious Rex, he must have been a very strange musician or maybe to become a part of Satna's calling when he formed the group in the late '60s and would defintely scare the shit out of them with their second album. Mixed with heavy organs, female vocalists, a strange cover, flute solos coming from hell, and dark occults that would be perfect for Halloween. You have some monks chanting the lord's prayer and Rex speaking in a devilish voice as he goes into a Tony Iommi guitar like solo on Absolution. The darker but mellower acoustic guitar and violin narration of Long Cold Black Night which sets the scary stories into musical campfire turmoil, while U.F.D.E.M. sets the mood with church-like organs becoming massive with synths as Doris Norton's operatic rocking vocals turns up the devilish heatalong with the scariest organic music of skeletal callings for Praesentia Domini. They sure know how to scare other 20th century artist like Philip Glass, Bram Stoker, and the cult hero of the Candyman with bees coming out of his mouth to be immortal. Not bad for a dark band to scare you in your sleeps!