Francesco Marras – Lost Souls

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7.0

• Band:
  Francesco Marras
• Duration: 00:44:11
• Available from: 21/02/2025
• Label:

• Hell Tour Productions

Sometimes, as you often feel in the most famous cooking programs, simplicity pays: good ingredients are enough, put together without overdoing and following tradition.
And this is how Francesco Marras returns to the scenes, not with a dish but with a solo album – his fourth – who is highly pleasant in following the teachings of what was the Hard'n'Heavy in the 1980s.
The Sardinian guitarist (present for some years also in the historic English band Tygers of Pan Tang, as well as in the Shadows Screaming) proves, along these ten compositions, to know how to create songs in a very spontaneous and limpid way, without wanting to go in force in search of demonstrations of technique or complex solutions, but still obtaining a quite varied tracklist.
In this new job, you have the feeling of listening to a record with which you want to pay the purest and bloodiest sound Heavy of bands such as Dokken and Whitesnake, written with wisdom and making yourself help from some vocal interpreters who do their work well.
It is clear that, as can happen in these cases, a real formation would have given a sense of greater continuity and union to this work; Instead Francesco does not limit himself to his main instrument, the guitar, with which he also shows a remarkable technique here, but loads himself on his shoulders a little, from the bottom to the voice – in seven of the ten songs – also planning the battery and taking care of the production. Small in the, if you consider the fact that the songs are still listening to with pleasure.
We remain very close to the eighties also as regards the sounds, for which perhaps you could do something more, making them cleaner and more powerful, but blood pieces such as the “Carnival of Darkness” Opener, with Gianni Pontillo dei Victory in the microphone, and the bombastic “Rise from the Ashes”, capable of hitting with explosive guitaries and a simple refrain, they show.
Listening continues on solid tracks with the vigorous “lost souls”, capable of recreating perfect eighties atmospheres thanks also to the rough and convincing test of a security like David Readman (Pink Cream 69) on the voice, with the melodic and intense “Through My Veins” and with the melancholy slow “More Than Life”, during which the roca of Francesco give the right mood to the song.
Evident, in a piece like “Cyber ​​lust”, as the difference at the vocal level is marked when to take the microphone in hand is a talented singer as in this case Iacopo Meille, Francis' companion in the Tygers of Pan Tang and author here of a remarkable test, inside a composition with more progressive colors where the keyboards are also located.
The guitars are the protagonists with exquisite solo parts, always put at the service of the songs which, inspired by the most classic sound of the hard'n'heavy scene, make up a disc that has some small flaws as described above, but is still capable of conquering, listening after listening, thanks to the passion that exudes.
“Lost Souls” perhaps will not reach world -renowned peaks, but it is still the testimony of an increasingly convincing Francesco Marras.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aldlaye78mi