Lost Innocence
History

LOST INNOCENCE

****************** THE BEGINNING ******************

The band comes in the summer 1989 and starts playing power metal influenced music. In that time there was an unstable line-up, but the songs, written by the two guitar players, were anyway ready in December of the same year. Thus the first demotape, "Grains of dust", is recorded and the Italian magazines talk about a new and promising power band, while people seem to appreciate the work.

In few months of the 1990 the line-up changes almost entirely: Michele Mastroberti is the only original member and founder of the band left. But with the new and better musicians, the sound changes and the old power mix with a sort of speed metal, where melody, power and atmosphere changes are the components for a more personal sound. After a year, in February 1991, it's the time for the second demo "Eternal land".

Lost Innocence starts to become a name in the Italian heavy metal scene. A lot of interviews, articles, reviews not only on metal magazines, praise the new band, that also wins some radio contest. But the line-up is not steady yet: drummer, bass and guitar player change, while the singer disappear... Michele Mastroberti, guitar player and founder member, then starts to sing.

With this new line-up (in which are the actual drummer Marco and the actual guitar player Francesco) the band plays alive everywhere in Italy and arranges new songs. These ones are, this time, thrash-oriented: the structures and the parts are more intricated and subtled, the melodies less ample but harder and the sound is very strong. In April of the 1992 is released the third demo "Obsessions - When the sun sleeps". The band sells about 1.000 copies of this tape in Italy and also in Europe (France, German and England). The tape, very well recorded, collects a lot of good opinions and the band gains fame.

****************** THE SECOND STEP ******************

An Italian metal label, the Dracma rec., selects Lost Innocence to participate with a song, the unpublished "Under the cathedral", in the second volume of its annual compilation "Nightpieces II". To record that song, Lost Innocence call a true singer, the actual one Tony. With the released of this CD compilation, the band breaks the boundaries of Italy and the name Lost Innocence runs in all Europe (and U.S.A. too).

In fact, in the winter of the 1993, a German label, the Inline music of Hamburg, asks the band to sign a contract. In September of that year, Lost Innocence go in Hamburg to record their debut album, "Cemetery of time". The songs are recorded in the Delta studios, which worked with great metal bands of the past (for example, do you remember the first two albums of the German band Accept?). Most songs are unpublished, but some of them are from the second and the third demo.

Sad to say, the Inline music label has a lot of economical problems and the release of the album is postponed week after week. After about two years the label goes bankrupt and the album never sees the light!

Fortunately, after some changes, Lost Innocence assume their new bass player, Vincenzo and the line-up is, finally, stable.

****************** TIME FOR TALES ******************

With the definitive line-up the band begins to play a sort of mix between the prog music and the thechno thrash: the songs are very hard but inside them there are a lot of melodies. In the last period, the band loves the articulated structures and the most various tempos (the 4/4 is now an exception). Harmonic progressions, unusual in the heavy metal music, but not so in the prog rock, are the rule. This, joined with the loud sound of the most true heavy metal, has generated the Lost Innocence Music.

1996 is the years in which Lost Innocence sign for Underground Symphony, an Italian metal label. The band enters in studio in late march and exits in early June with the true debut album "A tale never told", released in September.

The songs on this work are quite all unpublished: exception are the guitar intro "Grains of dust" (on the first demo, re-arranged), the guitar song "Guitar lament" and the ballad "The voice of a siren" (on the master of Cemetery of time, re-recorded) and the symphonic outro When the sun sleeps (on the third demo, re-arranged). There is also a cover entirely upset and metalized, of the pop song I just called to say I love you, by Stevie Wonder. The other songs of the album (the epic "Eternal land", the hard "The fifth season", "The last ceremony" and the intricate "Aliens" and "The opening on the boundary") represent the metal side of the band.

But the title-track, about 16 minutes, is the true banner of the band. In that song there are a lot of melodies, themes (see the main fountain theme, presented three times in the song, everytime in a different vest), variations, harmonic progressions, that work in junction of the words (a fantasy love story), painting sensations, characters and situations. The text of the track "A tale never told" narrates of an old king that remember his life in youth, with his young dead wife; the will of the king is to relive his happy times, now that he's old and tired, but he knows that the only way to do this, is the death. This is a tale never told, but is also the story of everyone of us!

****************** THE ACTUAL STORY ******************

In later 1996 two members leave the band: the drummer Marco and the second guitar player Francesco decide they can play no more with Lost Innocence.

The band, then, stops a few months, just until march 1997, when the two substitutes come to twist the line up and the sound. A keyboard take the place of the second guitar and the music becomes more progressive and more complex.

The new songs are more and more melodic and intricated, and the atmospheres are much more variegated. The new sound mix wisely the power of metal with the structures of the prog, mixing also different melodies and harmonies to obtain a multi-level music: so you will like it from the first hearing, but you'll continue to like it more and more every time you'll ear it, discovering new things at every hearing.

ACTUAL LINE-UP:
Michele Mastroberti: guitar, voice
Tony D'Alessio: lead vocals
Vincenzo Tringali: bass, voice
Peppe Sarno: keyboards
Ottavio Amato: drums, voice

CONTACTS & INFO:
Sabina Mastroberti
Viale degli eucalipti, 32
84134 Salerno - ITALY
Fax & Phone: 089-750846

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