Hora Prima by Hora Prima

Musically, it's a beautiful Italian Progressive Rock influenced by the genre's greatest musicians and performed with a modern and meticulously crafted sound, featuring excellent arrangements, meticulously researched sounds, masterful rhythm section, moments of intense emotion, and epic moments verging on Jazz-Rock. All under the banner of emotion.

This band, formed in Bari by Francesco Bux (drums, synth, and vocals) and Domenico De Zio (guitar), is completed by Roberto Gomes (keyboards and vocals), Roberto Di Lernia (bass and vocals), and Andrea Catalano (vocals).

The album consists of seven tracks totaling approximately 39 minutes, including a bonus track revisiting a New Trolls song, Le Roi Soleil.

"Uomo Ancestrale" (Primordio) in perfect Italian Progressive Rock style, an epic song that, after a beautiful, soft acoustic intro featuring Andrea's beautiful vocals, follows with a triumph of odd-time signatures, featuring great technical execution from the entire band, especially in the beautiful, overriding melodic theme. Domenico Del Zio's guitar parts are thrilling, and the strings and keyboards are superb. The phrasing between the drums and vocals is beautiful, lending a folk feel to a beautiful song that opens the album beautifully.

"Intelligence Artificiale" is a very complex song enriched by a very "musical" use of vocals that convey emotions such as tension, frustration, and anger. The keyboards are prominent. The song begins with a series of dizzying breaks, full of tension and emotion, which alternate with more melodic and regular sections. The alternation between these two styles is beautiful, with the drums always taking center stage. Beautiful song with a keyboard riff that takes me back about fifty years. It's also great when chaos dominates.

"Deus Ex Machina" starts and builds for a long time with spatial sounds, synth loops, and fragmented vocals under drums and percussion, pure electro-acoustic chaos, until the song stabilizes and enters magnificently under a melodic keyboard base, Roberto Gomes' electric piano, and the drums and bass that create a captivating and convincing rhythm with great synths and digressions into jazz fusion. The song closes with a great mellotron part. Beautiful song, I especially liked the change in sound between the two phases, executed with mastery and taste. Great composition. TOP song.

"Delirium Omnibus" with a guitar and drums intro that announces an explosion that will not be long in coming, a very hard rock piece, sung in English with its true hit-like four-quarter time and typical classic rock breaks. Beautiful vocals and bass. In the second part, keyboards and drums bring us back to prog, but the guitar remains the protagonist with its melodic solos. A beautiful song with long instrumental sections and a truly captivating chorus.

Diari Dalla Quarta Dimensione brings us a great, high-pitched and theatrical voice. The song begins slowly and then speeds up, with great sound research and excellent drumming by Francesco Bux. Very '70s hard rock, very Woodstock style, and a jazzy moment before the softer part where the voice becomes light and ethereal and the keyboards create a more epic mood. The lyrics are beautiful, among other things, before the fast passage returns, closing the song in style. A final break worthy of a stage. Great piece.

Al Khwarizmi has a sound that ranges between electric prog and fusion, with exceptional guitar and bass, unison phrasing on a very "waaa" guitar rhythm between drums and keyboards. A sort of jam of great complexity. The beautiful percussion adds something exotic to the sound. The guitar takes center stage with its long, well-defined sounds over the relentlessly rich rhythmic base, which then gives us a dizzying solo, as does the bass solo that follows, followed by the keyboards, and then the drums and their percussion. It ends with a break in the song's mood. A great instrumental.

Le Roi Soleil, a beautiful cover of the New Trolls song. Super-fast, with drums, bass, and guitar that outdo themselves. The keyboards fill every free space with a rich, enveloping sound. The vocals are extremely challenging (in my opinion), with perfectly focused countermelodies. What precision, guys, when the tempo slows down and the song becomes more melodic. A fantastic interweaving of harmonies and dissonances, choruses, countermelodies. Beautiful and superbly executed.

The artwork is beautiful, worthy of the album.

An album I've had the pleasure of listening to over and over again since receiving it, and I can definitely recommend it to all lovers of progressive rock and great music. It's fantastic and surprising that such an album was released in 2025; I hear certain things in albums that are decades old.

Tracks
1. Ancestral Man (Primordio) (8:34)
2. Artificial Intelligence (4:32)
3. Deus Ex Machina (6:16)
4. Delirium Omnibus (4:05)
5. Diaries from the Fourth Dimension (4:12)
6. Al Khwarizmi (4:34)
7. Le Roi Soleil (New Trolls) (Bonus Track) (6:27)
Running Time: 38:39

The Lineup
- Andrea Catalano - vocals
- Domenico De Zio - guitar
- Roberto Di Lernia - bass, vocals
- Francesco Bux - drums, synthesized vocals
- Roberto Gomes - keyboards, vocals