BLOODLESS

After the album Aquile e scoiattoli was released in 1976, Latte e Miele kept playing until the beginning of the 80's with an always more commercial sound but the singles they released were not successful. Their last single from 1980, Ritagli di luce, even took them to the Sanremo Italian song contest but was a flop. An album, recorded in 1979, documents this period of the band but it was not released until 1992 when it was picked up by the Mellow Records label. Titled Vampyrs and played by the three-piece line-up of Gori, Poltini and Vitanza, it's not comparable with the band's previous works...

The album opens with “King Of Darkness,” an instrumental halfway between Goblin and the French Rockets. Then come “Master of the Time,” “I Don't Wanna See You,” and “Burnin’ Out”: sung in English, they are melodic pop-rock songs, not particularly brilliant, shyly nodding to the Italo-dance music that was popular at the time. “Life Is Just a Game” is just a whiff of smoke on the water, while “Nobody’s Comin?” is a bland piano ballad that mimics the more commercial New Trolls. The following songs are sung in Italian and are a bit better, but “Stasera” (This Evening) is romantic, light-hearted pop that, while well-played, has nothing to do with prog, just like the other songs, which at times are close to the style of Umberto Tozzi (“Angela” and “Fumetti rosa”) or Pooh (“Dimenticare, ricominciare”). “Immagini di un porto” (Images of a seaport) is a ballad that reminds me a lot of the New Trolls of the eighties, while “Un colpevole mago”, “Rock’n’Roll Star” and “American Time” are, in my opinion, unremarkable melodic-style pieces.

On the whole, an unaccomplished work that perhaps would have been better left in the drawer and very far from essential for a prog collector.

Anyway, you can listen to the complete album HERE and judge for yourselves.