Riccardo Scaramelli
Thunderproject Vol.I
Independence Records
2013
Since the press release for this album featured Riccardo Scaramelli’s entire life story, I’m gonna tell you a few things about him. He took piano lessons as a kid, but had to give it up to be a basketball player (I’m not making this up, this was all in the press release). Then he had an injury and returned to music as a keyboard player in some unnamed band. Later, he tried to form his own band, but since he was unable to find people to join in he learned how to play the guitar. Then he formed Bluerose and he was able to release two full length albums, “Darkness and Light” and “Fallen from Heaven”. All that time he had been taking courses in audio recording techniques. After Bluerose split up, he made his own recording studio, founded his record company Independence Records and released his first solo album in which he plays all the instruments. That album is “Thunderproject Vol.I” and it “is based and structured”, as the press release states, “around the story told in the book ‘The Land of the Light’ (included in the limited edition of the project)”. Since I was not send this book, I will just be judging the record itself.
There are 14 hard rock/metal tracks in “Thunderproject Vol.I” which give the album an impressive total of 60:33 minutes running time. A long duration is expected when one is dealing with concept albums. Personally, I had lost interest in the whole thing after just around 10 minutes in the record. Maybe it’s because I didn’t have the book in front of me, but I doubt it. What I think this record lacks is heart. The musical compositions are more than fine; I mean there’s no way you could tell that this full sound comes from just one guy, and that whole mixture of hard rock with eastern music it has works pretty well. Also, the vocals are really tight and just at the border of being impressive without ever becoming pompous or pretentious. In other words, there’s not much else missing here, apart from that little and very vital ingredient that some call backbone or soul of feeling. I’m guessing that it was the artist’s intention to produce an album that would travel the mind of the listener to paths of the mind (now I’m being pompous and pretentious). Unfortunately, “Thunderproject Vol.I” takes you to the door of that journey, but doesn’t really go any further (my God! I wanna punch poetry-writing ass).
I understand that this sort of record is really difficult for one person alone to make, but the truth is that I found myself listening to “Thunderproject Vol.I” only because I had to in order to write this review. I guess Riccardo bit a little more than he could chew. A good thing that I can definitely say about him though is that he can surely play his guitar. There’s not one guitar solo which wasn’t technically precise and appealing to the ear. I offer “Lost In Deja-Vu” as an example. I’ll go out on the limb here and say that one of his favourite guitar players is Steve Vai. You see, much like Vai, Scaramelli is not afraid to explore the many distortion buttons on his pedals and experiment in order to get the perfect sound for each song. One listen to “Wasted” will convince everyone on that.
So in closing, “Thunderproject Vol.I” is an honest attempt from a dude who knows how to work hard on his music. Let’s hope there’s a “Thunderproject Vol.II” with a little more heart in that because the talent is there.
There are 14 hard rock/metal tracks in “Thunderproject Vol.I” which give the album an impressive total of 60:33 minutes running time. A long duration is expected when one is dealing with concept albums. Personally, I had lost interest in the whole thing after just around 10 minutes in the record. Maybe it’s because I didn’t have the book in front of me, but I doubt it. What I think this record lacks is heart. The musical compositions are more than fine; I mean there’s no way you could tell that this full sound comes from just one guy, and that whole mixture of hard rock with eastern music it has works pretty well. Also, the vocals are really tight and just at the border of being impressive without ever becoming pompous or pretentious. In other words, there’s not much else missing here, apart from that little and very vital ingredient that some call backbone or soul of feeling. I’m guessing that it was the artist’s intention to produce an album that would travel the mind of the listener to paths of the mind (now I’m being pompous and pretentious). Unfortunately, “Thunderproject Vol.I” takes you to the door of that journey, but doesn’t really go any further (my God! I wanna punch poetry-writing ass).
I understand that this sort of record is really difficult for one person alone to make, but the truth is that I found myself listening to “Thunderproject Vol.I” only because I had to in order to write this review. I guess Riccardo bit a little more than he could chew. A good thing that I can definitely say about him though is that he can surely play his guitar. There’s not one guitar solo which wasn’t technically precise and appealing to the ear. I offer “Lost In Deja-Vu” as an example. I’ll go out on the limb here and say that one of his favourite guitar players is Steve Vai. You see, much like Vai, Scaramelli is not afraid to explore the many distortion buttons on his pedals and experiment in order to get the perfect sound for each song. One listen to “Wasted” will convince everyone on that.
So in closing, “Thunderproject Vol.I” is an honest attempt from a dude who knows how to work hard on his music. Let’s hope there’s a “Thunderproject Vol.II” with a little more heart in that because the talent is there.