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Reviews

Nuova Era — L'Ultimo Viaggio
(Pick Up Records 5490112, 1988/1998, CD)

by Mike McLatchey, Published 1999-11-01

L'Ultimo Viaggio Cover art

Nuova Era was one of the first groups in the late 80s that helped to revive progressive and symphonic rock in Italy. Their first album, L’Ultimo Viaggio, was released in 1988 and, like Ezra Winston’s Myth of the Chrysavides from the same year, was a debut album that showed the band at an early stage in their development. Both bands would go on to greater things with their second albums, yet, remarkably, the debuts do seem to stand the test of time, certainly derivative, yet already entrenched in the classic style and doing well with it. Nuova Era performs a fairly routine and formulaic symphonic rock, although they would later uncover more subtleties that would make Dopo l’Infinito and Io e il Tempo instant favorites for fans of 70s Italian rock, despite the opaquely digital equipment. Much of the album is quite good, particularly the almost 13-minute title track and the spacey nine-minute “La Tua Morte Parla” which hint at the side-long pieces they would embrace later, before completely doing an about face — losing guitarist/vocalist Alex Camiati, and adopting a more analog approach. The dud track here is the five minute “Ritorno alla Vita” which sounds like a hideous 50s ballad and must be programmed out. The Contempo releases went out of print quite quickly. Let’s hope these ones stay in print, as they should be of interest to any fan of Italian symphonic progressive.

Filed under: Reissues, Issue 18, 1998 releases, 1988 recordings

Related artist(s): Nuova Era

 

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