 Grey Owl are: Nicola
Randone (vocals and acustic guitar) For contacts: Nicola Randone Grey Owl Mp3 Web Site
(including pictures, infos and songs) .. .. .. .. .. .. .. ..
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Welcome, my
friends, a very good prog band: GREY OWL from ItalyFirst Cd ('THE ICE WALL') now available!
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GREY
OWL Iron Maiden meets King Crimson 1994 is a great year for the Italian musical scene: Nicola Randone (voc) and Riccardo Cascone (dr) join Luca Tumino and Salvo Spata - leftovers of the metal band Nuclear Rain - and Grey Owl is born. The new band grows up through the local circuit of Ragusa and surroundings, presenting a beautifully progressive rock with an existentialist feeling. From 1994 to 1996 Grey Owl play at "Rock Estate '95", "Christmas Rock '95" and in several pubs of the province. The live performance at "La Festa della Musica" in June 1997 is Grey Owl's first major triumph. The music is pure magic. It ranges from heavy and grinding to slow and melodic, with the Italian lyrics fitting the soundscape well. The audience responds enthusiastically to this gamut of emotions and mood swings. 1997 saw the release of the debut LA PARETE DI GHIACCIO, which has been critically acclaimed by (a. o.) Metal Shock, Psycho, Buscadero and Rockerilla. No doubt, the superb instrumental patch and the dark, passionate ballads tell us: friends of classical metal as well as of Pink Floyd, E L & P, King Crimson and Kansas are at work here. Grey Owl's first album flows through sheer rebellion and mysterious images - like the journey of life itself. Advice for Internet users: LA PARETE DI GHIACCIO is largely featured at mp3.com.
The Flash and the Magic 1999 is a year of great changes and evolution. Luca Tumino (gr) leaves Grey Owl and is substituted by Orazio Fontes. Orazio is called "Petrucci" (after the famous John Petrucci) for his style of playing the guitar. Luca Cartiglia (kb), a musician who had joined Grey Owl at the time of LA PARETE DI GHIACCIO after having collected various experiences in Milan jazz clubs, must leave too, but the group gains the support of Gianni D'allo and Damiano Elp (both kb). These newcomers give to the the band a more unique stylistic focus. Now all the tracks are re-arranged using the orchestral effects offered by the new EMU Proteus Synth modules. For the time being, Grey Owl has a repertoire of 14 original songs: Padre Padrone, Cyborg, La parete di ghiaccio, Incubo, Notte, Assurda danza, I calabroni del nulla, Il fulmine e la Magia, Lo specchio, Il pentimento di dio dopo la fine del mondo, Morte di un amore, L'infinito, La giostra and Strananoia. Besides, the band makes coverings of Extreme, le Orme and Dream Theater.
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The Ice Wall (La parete di ghiaccio) Introduction: We have always trusted in the communicative power of music, in the possibility of music to make the human minds more sensible and expande their consciousness. The society of Consume & Competition has recycled the laws of the jungle with the purpose to let the strong ones be always victorious over the weak ones. This system has fooled and still fools many people, who are not able to see the rough reality. Today the traditional medias bomb us with mostly banal musical products, and the real good bands often remain completely unknown; they are forced to act in the underground, literally working in the subterraneans of the world. The destiny of these bands is to be permitted to diffuse their sound only through alternative channels, channels hardly ever profitable in a commercial sense. Considering this, we have been endeavored to release a product beyond all the common schemes. Apparently, the musical contents of our songs may result of difficult receptivity, but, honestly, we are sure to have expressed our points of view perfectly, fusing music and lyrics in a global artistic representation in which the music isn't just a simple playback for the lead voice, but is also used to complete the meaning of the lyrics. Naturally we don't dare to say that we are the only holders of the Truth! (Does any truth exist?) Our music and our lyrics are just the mirrored image of our cosmos. We understand that sometimes our vision of the world can be convincing and sometimes it lets the audience unconcerned or -- in extreme cases -- it can also hurt. Anyway, we hope that our message will reach your hearts! Signed: |
Track 1: Notte (Night) Notte is a pure hymn to all the nights: endless nights when pain and fear come over us to afflict our soul; nights of heroic acceptance of the own fate and hate for the men who dupe themself through the triviality of everyday's life twaddling of carreer and power; nights when a sweet love desire is darkened by the anguish of the upcoming day. And finally nights to die, to die with the vivid knowledge to have left nothing behind, except "the tears of an angel in chain".
Track 2: Assurda Danza (Mad Dance) Ispired by the Edgar Lee Master's Spoon River Anthology, Assurda danza lets speak the deads who rest (or should rest) under their scanty meter of wet soil. With sweetness and terror the deads recall their life, everybody's life, that is a mad dance with no clear purpose but -- life, after all. So we have the terrible and sweet Death on one side, that can be of great comfort. And on the other side we have the Life, meaning the hope to stay on the Earth one more day, amidst that absurd, mad dance.
Track 3: Incubo (Nightmare) The silence comes down just a moment before you close your eyes, and it comes carrying the usual loneliness. Just a moment later, your world goes upside down: it's a nightmare, not too different from the nightmare that you know when you walk on the streets. It's the everyday's nightmare, a tragical and absurd hallucination in which chaos and nonsense are expressed by symbolical and occasionally metaphysical images.
Track 4: I calabroni del nulla (The Hornets of Nothingness) "It's the time of dying, you're nothing if you are heartless - even if you do not win this war, you'll keep their seed inside yourself." The hornets represent the great deceives which dry our mind up and blacken our heart. It happens a lot of times: we are unable to talk to somebody and to gain a simple experience, just because we are afraid that we could suffer again, that we could have another disillusion. We are even unable to catch the intensity of a brief magical instant. We tremble when we think that we must go out and fight with not the slightest chance to win the battle. In that disastrous battle, the mind always tries to overwhelm the heart and injects some malefic germs (bugs!) into it. At the end, the things that don't kill us make us weakier and more anxious (not "stronger", as the legend says). And exactly this anxiety makes us the slaves of Evil.
Track 5: La parete di ghiaccio (The Ice Wall) A falling leaf is the symbol of something gone bad, maybe something irrevocable lost. The Ice Wall: a big and insurmountable obstacle. The leaf falls on the frozen lake and you wish you could be a child again, for enjoying the little things of life and forgetting all your dreadful and COLD problems. Then you find yourself among other people and you clearly see that you are definitively different from them. You're worried because you can't just understand the reason why. There is no way out of here, your life seems to be meaningless. But then a warm wind blows all the reminiscences off and a sunbeam digs into your heart wonderfully melting that big Ice Wall. The hopes are hard to die: they will triumph -- at the end.
Track 6: Il fulmine e la magia (The Lightning and the Magic) The lightning, or flash, is the power. The magic is the human richness -- that is the knowledge. Power and knowledge are given to a young hero by a magician who is truly allied with the forces of the nature. The young man must search an amulet, which symbolizes the meaning of life. The story of Il fulmine e la magia is set in a time when honor was more worth than life and strong riders were always ready to fight (and die) for some noble cause.
Track 7: Lo specchio (The Mirror) Lo specchio is the dream of a world turned round, where crimes make no sense at all. It's the idea of a world behind a slab or pane of glass, where "men were neither evil nor cruel". The evil inside us creates discriminations; the wishing "to have", instead of "to be", bears crimes. Only an upside down world (with other words: the world into a mirror) can stop this cruel clockwork. But also mirrors have their foes... The death of a child can break up dozen of them, "as a symbol of a life that will not turn back anymore". And when you come back home at night and see that your looking-glass has broken up, you can just use the glass fragments on your wrists, because "the sweet memories mildewed acid", get mody. The final suicide mustn't be seen in its negative meaning. The death leads us behind (or into) the mirror, to the desired world: a perfect reality that disregards concepts like endlessness and eternity. There's no joy, no completeness, in our "normal" world. All our aims are just illusions that help us to go on and make us shut our eyes in front of all the tragedies: holocausts, wars, hunger, despair. Behind the mirror, in the infinite dimension of the reality, "Good" and "Bad" can be interchanged; everything turns round becoming "good". The suicide is therefore a trespass in an upside down dimension, where "men are neither evil nor cruel".
Track 8: Padre Padrone (Father Tyrant) The song of our youth! A desperate song, and maybe a little banal in its excessive rage. This song tells us of a lived pain, a pain that may appear ridiculous to an adult person. The vain desire to be understood... But the private drama enlarge itself then, and we understand that it's a song about the troubles of our society, about the crimes committed by depraved persons who are incapable to hold moral values; narrow-minded, superficial individuals. Everything depends on our childhood: "Father, mother... you who never loved me, tell me, please, why have you generated me?..." Here, here is the final product of your copulation: A MONSTER! A CRIMINAL! This is a clearly audible message sent to all the severe and austere parents: teach your children well, don't kill their dreams; and don't ever deny your love. |
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Nico Randone 's Morte di un amore |
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The story