Andrea Castelli

'Planet Time'

 (Guitar Chef records)













MARK: 62/100



 
An hour of melodic metal/rock is contained in this album full of different line-ups and guest musicians, which is proudly dedicated to the Cappanera brothers, ex-band members many years ago before they found peace in another world.

Here you can find good refrains but the rest of the songs is a bit tasteless (it's the case of "Come with Me"), also because of a weak recording often uncapable of smoothly amalgamating the instruments, with the result that it doesn't involve the listening.
Among the best tracks, "Invisible Sun" and "Goodbye Sun Islands", where Morby sings higher than most women could, while "Little Colourfull Hands" is the highlight of the platter, opposed to "Silk Way", the triumph of boredom in a composition avulsed from the other ones, although this is a fairly sunny record. Mind, it is not that I am against variety, on the contrary, I believe it's the spice of life and I rejoice Andrea Castelli has centred the target at least with the Buddhist and very original instrumental track "Mystic Illusion".
Another two successful songs are "Jungle Dance" (Led Zeppelin vocals meet US Metal signed by a good solo by Matt Cafissi, one of the many big names involved in this album) and "This Time around", a cover version of an old hit by Deep Purple.
If we count the excellent bass work by Andrea, especially in the instrumental Jazz/Funk/Primus-styled title track, the average achieves the sufficiency, but the general feeling after the 14th track is that too much attention was placed on the hook generated by the several guest friends (Gianluca Galli, Jacopo Meille, Mark Ramsex from Smelly Boggs and Death SS, Manu Appelius from Wardogs, Mike Hurtman, David Lee Roth, Frank Gambale and ex-Shabby Trick just to name a few), whereas too little was aimed at the songwriting and the production of this project.

After six years, still no follower has been given birth, therefore I doubt there will ever be one, but we can console ourselves with Castelli's main band, Mantra and be beholden to them for the high class material they systematically deliver us.


MARKUS GANZHERRLICH - 2nd June 2007
 





Line-up on this record:
Jacopo Meille/Morby/Mark Ramsex/Filippo Cresti, v.
Gianluca Galli/Matt Cafissi, g.
Andrea Castelli, b.
Pino Chimenti/Manu Appelius, d.
Cesare Atticciati/Francesco Oliveto, k.



Contacts:
Official site: http://www.myspace.com/mantraitaly



Demo-/Disco-graphy:
Planet Time, CD -2001