Tactical Nuclear Penguins continue their march

While waiting to release a new album with his band and to tour Italian stadiums next summer, Richard Zanottithe frontman of the Tactical Nuclear Penguinsfor his 30th birthday (he turns 30 today), he gave himself a present “Romantic but you die”the new single from the Bergamo group, which is currently stuck in the recording industry “Fake news”album released in December 2022. Below is our review of the fifth studio album by Tactical Nuclear Penguins.

There is one certainty in the fifth album of Pinguini Tattici Nucleari, who went from being a band that wrote their first songs in their bedrooms to filling Italian stadiums: in “Fake news” the protagonists of the songs remain the underdogs, those with crooked existences so loved and celebrated by Tim Burton, those with “lives that pass on the razor’s edge”, as Riccardo Zanotti himself, the group’s voice, sings. This is because the Pinguini, despite having entered the mainstream world like a tank, do not want to distort themselves, they reject any form of stardom and continue to talk about their reality, without losing the focus of their imagination.

“Today we live where we have always lived, stardom is far from the way of life of the people of Bergamo. It is a land of hard work, not of appearance. We are people very far from the glittering salons frequented by many artists”, they explained at the presentation of the project. If on the textual front, the six musicians do not deviate from their universe, on the musical one they try to step forward, experimenting and playing with music.

In “Fake news” there are the sweetest and most stripped-down ballads, uptempo songs that wink at urban (“Zen”), rockier pieces (“Non sono cool”), purely singer-songwriter incursions (“Cena di classe”) and great tributes to pop with pieces with choruses perfect for being sung in stadiums (the already well-known “Giovani wannabe” and “Melting Pop”).

It is a varied, pleasant album, in the name of credible, quality pop that flows as clear as the water of a mountain river. And it is played from start to finish. “We come from prog, playing for us is the basis of making music”, underlines the band. An aspect that the group proudly claims. “’Zen’ talks about the difficulties of our work, the pressures generated by the latter. ‘Non sono cool’ and ‘Barfly’ are on the same wavelength. There are also songs of loneliness, children of the pandemic. The answers to the evils of life for us, however, are found in being together. This is why we believe so much in the dimension of the band. ‘Forse’ and ‘Hikikomori’ come from the disorientation and pain of Covid. They are more intimate. It is a real album. ‘Fake news’ is a contrasting title”, they continued in the story of the album.

One of the most beautiful tracks of the project is “Forse”: a delicate pop about the difficult place in the world of people outside certain schemes. It would not be out of place in Samuele Bersani’s songbook. Perhaps because of a common progenitor called Lucio Dalla. A song that will echo in the stadiums is “Non sono cool”, a piece with a Blur sound that enhances Simone Pagani’s bass and there is also a pinch of social criticism: “When you say real country you mean country of subjects and kings/And having ass means licking the ass of those who are higher than you”. With this album Pinguini Tattici Nucleari continue their march.