ATLANTIDE — Francesco Ti Ricordi (review)

ATLANTIDE — Francesco Ti Ricordi album cover

Album · 1976 · Hard Rock

3/5 · 2024-09-10
siLLy puPPy

ATLANTIDE was a rather unusual Italian progressive rock band of the 1970s in a few ways. Firstly the band which featured the four brothers Mimmo Sanseverino (guitar, vocals), Mario Sanseverino (bass), Leonardo Sanseverino (organ, keyboards) and Matteo Sanseverino (drums) was formed in 1972 in the small ancient village of Cirigliano, Italy which is located to the far south but the following year in 1973 the members mysteriously picked up and relocated to the town of Rottweil, Germany where they spent the next few years playing with bands like Message, Atlantis and the Scorpions and garnered favorable reviews and interest however the band wouldn’t release its one and only album FRANCESCO TI RICORDI until 1976 which ironically saw the one and only album of the French band of the same name released.

Despite having moved to Germany the band continued to perform and record in the Italian language making this a very unusual band indeed. The band was only slightly on the progressive side focusing much more on an organ driven style of hard rock not unlike Deep Purple, Atomic Rooster or Germany’s own Birth Control however Mimmo Sanseverinno’s vocal style was right out of the Italian prog playbook with competent passion lyrical deliveries yet not really drawing any obvious comparisons. The band featured a heavy acid rock fuzz guitar sound and a thundering bass and drum rhythmic drive. In many ways the album was a bit achronistic sounding more like the early proto-prog heavy psych that was popular during the 1970-71 timeline but considering many of the tracks were written over the course of several years it’s not surprising the band retained its earliest stylistic approach.

The album was fairly typical as it featured six tracks at 40 1/2 minutes with predominant focus on standard hard rock compositions that featured scattered progressive elements scattered about with certain tracks like “Quando La Luna” attaining a longer playing time and moments of varied progressive time signature changes and more intricate motifs inserted between the standard verse / chorus / bridge normalcy of the hard rock standard. Despite a well played album that adds a hefty dose of satisfying guitar fuzz as well as a prominent exposure opening for some of the top bands of the German scene, ATLANTIDE’s one and only album failed to sell at all with most of the albums being sold at live performances. Despite the relative obscurity the album has found two reissues. One on CD in 1994 and then a second vinyl release in 2014 as popularity for all things 70s prog has exploded worldwide.

Overall this is a very pleasant slice of Italian hard rock with a few prog leanings that unfortunately didn’t deliver enough originality or diversity to the tracks to really stand out amongst the multitude of hard rock and prog acts of the era. More notable for its unique swap of nations status and for sticking to the Italian language playbook while residing in Germany than for the music itself but nevertheless the tracks are melodic and beautifully performed with all the musicians getting the job done quite well. The main problem is that the songwriting while decent wasn’t really outstanding enough to really warrant this band as any kind of essential element to either the hard rock scene or even the prog lite universe for that matter. A mere footnote in the history of Italian prog but not an un pleasant one at all. Had the band stuck it out and developed a more dynamic charisma then perhaps it would’ve gone further. Amazingly none of the members ever left Germany.