Magma - Mekanik Destruktiw Kommandoh

Let's Say that a Band from France would combine the concept of Opera, Jazz, Science Fiction, and a chanting voices of 'Hortz Fur Dehn Stekehn West' would frighten the shit out of Wagner and Beethoven of the Classical Music-era from a group like Magma and their Zeuhl-like Space Rock Opera of Mekanik Destruktiw Kommandoh. Founder and Drummer of Magma, Christian Vander decided to take the foreign language translation into a space-like language called Kobaia. The story of MDK is about the planet (Kobaia) and the people who live there are moving to another planet to find a new beginning and a new life, but Nebher Gudahtt who is also part of the planet, he wants to them to stay in the planet, but no one is following him and refuse to take his suggestion.
The music is almost very Rhiengold like Space Opera sound. You have the crossover between Edgard Varese, Richard Wagner, John Coltrange, and a crossover of Frank Zappa meets Ange. Even though it's a crazy idea to make a Outer Space opera version of Das Rheingold, It is a real kicking ass album that will send you into the darker side of the Milky Way. Not bad for a Zeuhl Band to take the concept into a Galaxy far, far away and to boldly go where no man has gone before.

Egg - The Polite Force

Egg's next album would be a combination of weird and crazyness that could really be more brilliant and strange noises that will leave you suprised. The Polite Force is a massive underground album that has the recipes that you need. Avant-Garde effects, Bach, Fuzztone Organs, and the travels to the cores of asylums! They were taking the album to a territory that no band had ever done before. There are some moments that show Egg in their formation in the autobiographical Soft Machine-like tradition of A Visit to Newport Hospital which talks about the group's formation in the Canterbury circuit. The Jazz-like compostion of Contrasong shows the band into a Bombastic view with a horn section that will have Miles Davis send you down the corridor. Egg then becomes more weirder with maybe their omage to the Beatles Revolution no. 9 with Bolik which has some ambient madness and noodling plus a Bach tradition to go along with it. The last track on this album is their Magna Carta with the 20-minute arrangement of Long Piece No. 3. This is pure crazyness right here. You have the mixtures of ELP's Tarkus, Deep Purple metal sound-like organs, and a bit of shrieking noises again that will give you goosebumps into massive structures of hell. This album is a true combining force of Evil, Ambition, Alarming Organs, and strange twisting figures that will keep you going for more!

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!

Pink Floyd - Atom Heart Mother

Pink Floyd were already hitting the London scene in the late '60s with their cult hero Syd Barrett after the release of singles Arnold Layne and their psychdelic debut album, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn. It wasn't until 1968 where Syd was taking the drug scene a little too far after the release of See Emily Play and the pop humor grocery store sing-along track single, Apples and Oranges. Childhood friend David Gilmour replaced Syd after the release of A Saucerful of Secrets when Syd said goodbye with the folk experimental track Jugband Blues.

They had a talk about what they were going to do after Syd left, they decided to move forward to a planet where no man has gone before. Their 1970 album, Atom Heart Mother is an explosive and almost bombastic concept for the Floyd with the Symphony Orchestra, wires in people's brains, the summer of 1968, Sun's rising above the english country houses, and a good old fashion psychedelic breakfast.

The opening track that clocks in at 23 minutes and 44 seconds of Atom Heart Mother, is the gem of a perfect symphonic sound. You have Rick Wright doing some odd sounds on the keyboard, David Gilmour's space guitar work, Roger Waters doing a little bass solo, and Nick Mason's drum sounds becoming more quiet and calm. The track would almost become more of an alternate soundtrack to Stanley Kubrick's 2001 which I will get to later on. It's almost atmospheric and strange, but absolutely well made.

If is almost a science-fiction folk ballad from Roger Waters becoming more of a fingerpicking type of guy on the acoustic guitar and David Gilmour doing his Outer Limits sound on his guitar also. Summer '68 is another ballad this time from Richard Wright. It's more of a Rick's taste of the culture of the song about 1968 with the hippies and the love-in's before leaving to serve his country in Vietnam.

Fat Old Sun is David Gilmour's number about the sun reaching over the sky as the song is more of a calming acoustic guitar introduction with Gilmour's taste of vocals. And then at the last 2-minutes of the number, he goes into a rockin' guitar solo. It is so good, you know it's absolutely excellent!

The last track Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast, is your mouth-watery 13-minute experimental piece of their roadie Alan Stiles (who cooked breakfast for the Floyd), orders some breakfast and then it becomes more of a flourish/acoustic/prog number while he munches away while the band plays along as he enjoys the composition.

Now about the Kubrick situation. According to legend, Filmmaker Stanley Kubrick heard the album and he loved it so much, he asked the Floyd to compose a film score for him to do his next film which is one of the most controversial films made of all time A Clockwork Orange. The floyd refused to do it because they didn't know how the film was going to set the scenery.

Atom Heart Mother is Pink Floyd's masterpiece along with Wish You Were Here, Animals, The Wall, Meddle, and Dark Side of the Moon. This was the beginning of the Floyd's career up into Space. Even though to this day they hated working on this album, they really kicked the temperature up to 200!

Egg - Egg

If there was one band that took the Canterbury Prog scene into dangerous musical asylums, it would be Egg. Egg was a trio similar to ELP, Soft Machine and Le Orme. They had the mixtures of fuzzy organs, classical bach traditions, and english country garden avant-garde Jazz metal. So they weren't your typical bombastic and gigantic Moog Synths that Keith Emerson had for Karn Evil 9, but more of a trick of the tail twist of evil nature of forbidden fruit.

Their debut album released in 1970 simply called the self-titled album Egg, is a massive arranging and composition of pure weirdness. From the opening carousel jazz like number of 'While Growing My Hair', which is more of a tradition of the Soft Machine's early days in the late '60s more of 'Joy of a Toy' type of introduction. As I mentioned before, they have a classical music style and pay tribute to Johann Sebastian Bach of the Tocatta suite with the fusion and classic organ like sound of 'Fugue in D minor',

'I will be absorbed' is more of a jazzy feel, and the full length version of the next suite in its entirety because of some situations of the rights issue with one of the composers with 'Symphony no. 2 in 4 movements.' You have the Zappa feel and the Edvard Grieg fast tempo organ tradition of 'In the Hall of the Mountain King' into a canterbury version of The Nice that will have your head explode!

Egg had a small fanbase in Europe, but the group would later relase two more albums (The Polite Force and the Civil Surface) until they broke up in 1975 with their last third album. Today, there's an archival album called The Metronomical Society which features BBC Sessions, and rare live recordings in Egg's true style of insanity!

Rare Bird - Rare Bird

Rare Bird's 1st album is almost a perfect taste of sinister progressive rock. It almost carried a darker tale of epics and lost for love. But for these guys, they know their genre of Prog very well. Everything on this album, is like a mach made for political views, knights, Pictures of Dorian Gray in a female version with the Devil, and an absolute jazzy fuzztone sound of music. Tracks like the humor sound of the omage 1950's rockabilly sound of 'Times' is catchy and very funny to the rockin' sound of teddybear elvis music while 'You Went Away' is a lush break-up song of going to the war and dealing with their privacy. You also have the anthem of all Prog anthems that was a hit in '69 with 'Sympathy' which deals about Sexual Fantasies and the political protest to stop starvation and war. 'Natures Fruit' is almost another humor song that is quite bubblegumtype of sound, then it becomes more of a swing jazzy sing-along piece. Then the last two tracks is like putting a cherry on a piece of lemon pie. 'Bird on a Wing' is almost a battlefield stompin' music and a love songy ballad about a bird flying up to the heavens to search for a new land, The banging of the Tom-Toms and the eerie keyboard introduction of the harmonizing darker, plus sinister whisper vocals with the 'God of War'. And then two extra bonus tracks. 'Devil's High Concern' is more of a conceptual taste of heavy metal and similar to The Nice. The story of the Queen's last days as she sees the pictures of the lover's that she had and then makes a deal with the Devil with Mystical fuzzy Organs. The mono version of 'Sympathy' is almost a half-speed piece that is almost pure perfecto genius and ends it on a organotic note. Rare Bird's debut album is a true diamond for them. They have relased their next album in 1970 with As You Mind Flies By which is also a superb and killer album. But they never had any success and never saw the light of day after the release of the first two albums. The music of the Sympathy and Rare Bird's music flies into a new generation of fans and new prog-nuts!

The Soft Machine - The Soft Machine

1968, the year when music started and the world changed. Martin Luther King and RFK were assassinated, the War in Vietnam was still going on, and the riots were in flames. It wasn't until this group from the Canterbury scene that took the psychedelic scene in london that took the genre of Jazz Fusion and Experimental music into another direction. The Soft Machine is one of the bands that took that direction with their self-titled debut album with a taste of instrumentals, Robert Wyatt's mellow vocals and his drums, Kevin Ayers using a speaking tone with the Bass Guitar, and Mike Rateledge's fuzztone organ that would set the world on fire!

I have enjoyed listnening to this album and the group also. They were the true pioneers in the Canterbury Progressive Rock-era. Apart from this, they don't back down to this because of the way they constructed the music from start to finish. Everything on their debut album is like a clean jewel that has been restored and waiting to buy it for the perfect person to enjoy.

Since this album has some amazing cuts on the Soft Machine debut album, there are some crazy tracks that they push it close to the edge. For example, the 7-minute instrumental experimentation 'So Boot If At All' which is is them doing some strange instruments that carry the Syd Barrett tradition of 'Matilda Mother', 'A Certain Kind' is the warmer taste on riding in your SUV on a beautiful sunday afternoon with Robert Wyatt's lush vocals and the story of the girl he loves to be and marry with while Mike's jazzy bebop sound on the organ.

The two rockers 'Save Yourself' and 'We Did It Again', pushes the Soft Machine into Proto-Prog-Punk territory that his beyond hell and chants of a revamp tradition of the Kinks 'You Really Got Me.' 'Lullabye Letter' is filled with anger and frustration song as Wyatt talks to his girlfriend in the song while having sex and making love as the band becomes a fuzztone sound of Pink Floyd.

Other tracks including the mellow heavier two part introduction of 'Hope for Happiness' is a class of proportions of Wyatt's skeleton's in the closet side, the low-key anthem of organs for the Trumpeter's narration of Kevin Ayers speaking tone of voice in 'Why Are We Sleeping?' and his prog fusion of techniques of space in 'Joy of a Toy.'

They were pre-Floyd and pre-fusion back in those days. They were showing their true side of the music scene of the late '60s than Jefferson Airplane and Cream were doing. The Soft Machine's debut album is a pro-choice and early punk prog to get you cookin'