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Blacksmith Tales — Pathway to Hamlet's Mill
(Immaginifica Aereostella, 2024, CD)

by Henry Schneider, Published 2025-02-27

Pathway to Hamlet's Mill Cover art

Pathway to Hamlet’s Mill is Blacksmith Tales’ second album conceived by Davide del Fabro. This is a concept album with theme based on the book Hamlet’s Mill by Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend. Hamlet’s Mill is an examination of the relics, fragments, and allusions that have survived over time. Specifically, the book centers on the mytheme (a fundamental generic unit of narrative structure typically involving a relationship between a character, an event, and a theme from which myths are thought to be constructed) of a heavenly mill which rotates around the celestial pole and is associated with the maelstrom and the Milky Way. The main theses of the book include (1) a late Neolithic or earlier discovery of the precession of the equinoxes, (2) an associated long-lived megalith-building late Neolithic civilization that made astronomical observations sufficient for that discovery in the Near East, and (3) that the knowledge of this civilization about precession and the associated astrological ages was encoded in mythology, typically in the form of a story relating to a millstone and a young protagonist in the Icelandic Skáldskaparmál, which the authors assert to be Hamlet, hence the title. Blacksmith Tales takes these concepts of time that is no longer linear and consequential but marked by cycles and fatalities written in the sky (“Dance of the Stars”) and in a vortex that turns back on itself and grinds time (“Key to the Temple”) to produce this excellent Italian symphonic progressive rock album. The 2024 line-up features Stefano Sbrignadello (lead and backing vocals), Simone Morettin (drums), Beatrice Demori (lead and backing vocals), Marco Falanga (guitars and bass), Luca Zanon(piano, Moog, Hammond organ, and synths), and Davide del Fabro (piano and backing vocals). The music is dark, powerful, and symphonic; the compositions are tightly orchestrated; and the production is neat and clean. All the right elements of classical Italian progressive rock are here from semi-classical piano solos, to thunderous Hammond organ excursions, to aggressive guitar passages, to tasteful and understated Mellotron choruses. This majestic album is a welcome addition to modern progressive rock.

Filed under: New releases, 2024 releases

Related artist(s): Blacksmith Tales

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