Metamorfosi - Inferno

If the English Prog Bands were writing complex pieces like Chess, Tolkien, and set it to mind-blowing time signatures, then one band from the land of Italy took Prog into a darker area based on Dante’s the Divine Comedy and that group is Metamorfosi. For their previous debut album, E Fu il Sesto Giorno, Metamorfosi went into the gates of hell from the sound of Classical and 18th century strange tales of the downward spiral. On their last and only second album, they went full circle and scaring listeners with mind-boggling horror.
The opener Introduzione could have been used as an alternate soundtrack for the Italian Horror or Hammer Films in London as an introduction as if Bram Stoker was writing a rock opera for Count Dracula. It has a beautiful piano melody while the guitar takes over and then goes into a chaotic time signature which leaves your heart pounding for the continuation of the concept album. For keyboardist Enrico Oliveri, it was a piece of cake for him. An Italian version of Keith Emerson as well as Rick Wakeman, shows his arrangement on numbers including; Porta Dell’Inferno, Caronte, and Spacciatore Di Droga, which almost sounded like a militant church funeral music that was mad, insane, and fucked up in a twisted way while lead singer Jimmy Spitaleri lends out a huge roar of his voice to get the tempo right on the target as if he was the Phantom of the Opera.
Metamorfosi also had a bit of team work in the sound, Roberto Turbitosi would come up with some ELP bass lines while Gianluca Herygers drum technique is magical with some
exerting compositions such as Lussuriosi and the political tritone against racism Razzisti. Once again, the music doesn’t suck, it a wonderous beauty of a flaming fire with sinister proportions.
Unlike other Italian Prog Rock bands, Metamorfosi were a band that were ahead of their time and sometimes paying homage to their heroes including English poet Edgar Allen Poe with the Floydian atmospheric meets Gracious! piece Violenti and the thunderstormers Malebolge and Sfruttatori as Spitaleri’s voice sounded like it was recorded in a dark cave as the band do some experiments on their instruments. And it got them word of mouth about their performances in the Italian music scene in the ‘70s than VDGG or ELP could have a huge fanbase.The group split up in 1978, but reformed in the late ‘90s to do a sequel to Inferno with Paradiso as the music still grows with a new and old generation to hear this astonishing band with a lot of potential and got you scratching your head thinking ‘What the fuck just happened?’ Listening to this, you can tell that Dante is rolling over his grave that a band would do a concept based on his glory of glories of the Divine Comedy. No wonder they were insane and having a good ol’ time playing like mad scientists from dusk till dawn