CSI, Bluvertigo, Litfiba: but does Italian rock know how to look forward?
First i Litfibathen i Bluvertigo and finally i CSI. The 2026 it has only just begun, but what will be one of the main ones is already being identified trends of the season in the musical field: the return of the most iconic rock bands on the scenebetween nostalgia and revival. The trend started already last year, with the CCCP reunion (the tour that marked the return of the “Io sto bene” group had already started in 2024), The Theater of Horrors and Afterhourswhile in the United Kingdom that of Oasisfocusing precisely on nostalgia, was a hit at the box office. The last to announce their return, in chronological order, were CSI. Making official a news that had already been in the air for months, and which was rumored during the last dates of the reunion tour of the CCCPGiovanni Lindo Ferretti and his companions have confirmed that the “Tabula rasa electrificata” band will reform next summer for a series of concerts, a documentary and, perhaps, even new music. Ferretti, Giorgio Canali, Gianni Maroccolo, Francesco Magnelli and Ginevra Di Marco had not played together since 2002.
A few hours before i Bluvertigo they had surprisingly announced the unfreezing of the brand for a concert-event scheduled for April 14th at Alcatraz in Milan. Fans were already waiting for them last year: it was the thirtieth anniversary of their debut album, “Acids and Bases”. Morgan, Andrea “Andy” Fumagalli, Livio Magnini and Sergio Carnevale were unable to agree in time: better late than never, after all. The LitfibaMeanwhile, for the fortieth anniversary tour of “17 Kings”, which will see Piero Pelù and Ghigo Renzulli return to play with Antonio Aiazzi and Gianni Maroccolo, the other two founding members of the iconic group of the Italian rock and alternative scene of the 80s and 90s (both left the band in 1989, due to artistic differences), they announce that they have already sold 50 thousand tickets: practically a stadium, or almost.
Gen Z has to make do
Compared to 2002, when CSI disbanded, millennia seem to have passed for Italian rock. At the time, Ferretti and his associates were part of a microcosm. Today they resemble a spaceship sailing in the void: «I’m curious to see avant-gardes entering the market with a straight leg to change things», says Maroccolo, 65 years oldthat when Måneskin won the Sanremo Festival in 2021 with “Zitti e Buoni”, then doing an encore at Eurovision, he was among the older generation rockers who rejoiced at Damiano David’s triumph and partners, invested – by the media, rather than the public – with the task of bringing rock back to the center of the village. «And now get angry and shut up, right-thinking alternative pussies, fake rockers, expert critics, stinkers with a stink under their noses, snobs… Nothing happens by chance! Like it or not, these people are talented and good», wrote the bassist on social media.
The opinion of Giovanni Lindo Ferretti, who is now 72 years old and has long lived as an ascetic, together with his horses, in Cerreto Alpi, on the Reggio Emilia Apennines, is different: “I have the impression that experiences like theirs don’t last long because, underneath, there is nothing,” he said. After the great exploit, the band disappeared, taking an indefinite break (while singer Damiano David, 27, with his solo project has repositioned himself more as a pop star than a rock star), and effectively leaving the new generations without a similar mainstream reference point. It is therefore quite impressive to realize that to find some healthy rock a young person has to wait for the reunions of groups with glorious histories, but whose members are over fifty years old.
The middle generation, which resists
It is also true, however, that if on the one hand Italian rock is currently experiencing a season marked by great reunions, on the other there is a group of bands, some historic, others that have emerged in the last fifteen or twenty years, which continue to carry forward this language. They release records, often solid and sometimes even very successful, they play continuously and maintain a strong relationship with the public. However, they are no longer breaking bands: they don’t open up new imaginaries, they don’t inaugurate scenes, they don’t really move the axis of discussion forward. They keep a world going, they make it evolve just enough, without however transforming it. Among the most active groups of recent years they must be mentioned without a doubt Zen Circus, The Ministers, Negrita and Three Merry Dead Boys and Sick Drumalthough the latter is more the project of Gian Maria Accusani. Appino (47 years old) and his companions last year released a record like “Il male”, Paolo “Pau” Bruni’s (58 years old) Negrita “Canzoni per anni pietati” while the Ministri (Federico Dragogna is 44 years old) are back with “Aurora popular”: works different in sound and approach, but united by a strong identity and a centrality of the live performance which remains decisive.
They are bands that grind out dates all over Italy, with a following built over time, and which represent a backbone of contemporary Italian rock. Fundamental groups such as Baustelle and Subsonica also gravitate around the rock universe, although without being able to be traced back to it in the strict sense.. Both have had and claimed, at different times, a rock matrix: Baustelle did so openly in records like “Elvis”, while Subsonica have always dialogued with that world while moving on electronic coordinates. They are two central names in Italian music, but they do not represent a strictly rock push.
A different matter concerns i Marlene Kuntz of Cristiano Godano (59 years old), a historical name that today appears more explicitly linked to the dimension of memory. The tour dedicated to “Catartica”, debut album and generational point of reference, and the one that will arrive on “Il vile” tell of this phase. Impossible not to mention the Verdenas of the brothers Alberto and Luca Ferrari (the former 47 years old, the latter 44), one of the few Italian bands that, over the years, has truly had an impact on the language of rock, signing records capable of marking a fracture and always maintaining a strong recognizability. Today, however, the future of the group is shrouded in more than one question: the exit of Roberta Sammarelli (46 years old) opens a new uncertain cycle for a band that has always made compactness one of its distinctive traits. Sammarelli entered the Yes! Boom! Voila!an interesting but not entirely “new” project, was born from the meeting of musicians with a long history behind them, including Giulio Ragno Favero, already in the Teatro degli Orrori. More than a new scene, a recombination of already existing paths.
A band that instead brought a breath of fresh air, despite also placing itself in a sort of “middle generation”, are Fast Animals and Slow Kids. Younger than many of the bands mentioned, they have built a credible path, spoken to a new audience and demonstrated that a rock band can still grow without immediately taking refuge in nostalgia. In summary, all these bands keep the language of Italian rock alive: they keep it recognisable, they partially update it, but they don’t really open up a new phase. Above all, what is missing is a young scene capable of picking up this legacy and taking it elsewhere. Not even Måneskin themselves succeededdespite their international success: their parable did not generate a movement or a new wave of bands.
Something moves (in the upside down)
Yet something is moving. Excluding the very interesting ones Neoprimitivesamong the younger realities that today carry forward a personal and coherent vision we should mention: Post Fog (Carlo Corbellini is 27 years old), he Elephant Brain (32-34 years) e the Tamangos. They deserve a separate discussion rag dollsthe only all-female rock band to enjoy real mainstream visibility, given that they will land on the Sanremo stage. However, this is not a new formation: the project has been active for years and has been renewed especially with the entry of frontwoman Cleo (30 years old). If in the United Kingdom and the United States rock seems to be going through a phase of new turmoilwith bands and trajectories still open, in Italy all this continues to struggle: «Music in our time had a different value, we were a consortium, there was a scene, it’s true, but now everything has changed. Even in the record companies there were the right figures in the right places. Now people listen to music from their cell phones”, regrets Giovanni Lindo Ferretti. In short, the feeling is that today rock seems more committed to resisting than imagining its own future.
