This band settled on the Spanish word for fear, miedo, as their band name, which they believe evokes the feeling of their generation—as they say “a time of uncertainty, of lives not lived, of anxiety and fear”. I’ll give you one guess what kind of music they play. That’s right, hard alternative rock and roll. After years of playing in cover bands, femme fatale guitarist Michela “Lovett” Rovati, needed to strike out on her own and produce her own songs. So, she enlisted the help of fellow guitarist Gian Paolo, bassist Luigi Longo, drummer Luca Baldrighi and vocalist Spek to create MIEDO. You can hear the classic hard rock influences in the wailing guitar solos and crunchy power chords, whereas the bass and drums take on a more “noise” feel. At times the voice of Spek is sweet and melodic, at other times raw and raspy, but always powerful, recalling the great grunge and power rock singers of the nineties. In between rehearsals and making their stage debut at the Fuorionda outdoor festival in Pavia last year, they managed to make time to set up a home studio and self-produce their debut EP. The record is self-titled Miedo and includes four original tracks, which you can all stream on their Soundcloud page. It’s 20 minutes of sheer power, starting off with the ethereal guitar lick on “The Captain of My Soul”, then goes right into the upbeat title track “Miedo”, which rocks hard like an mid-career Black Sabbath album. If you want to see them really rock, though, you’re going to have to see them play live! They seriously rocked the stage at The Speakeasy in Milan for Emergenza Festival Italia. Stay tuned to find out if they’ve made it to the semi-finals.

MC