New Trolls are an Italian progressive rock band known for their fusion of rock and classical music. Their history is full of line-up changes, band name changes and struggles between band members.
The band was born around mid- 1960s when five musicians: Vittorio de Scalzi (guitar, vocals), Nico di Palo (guitar, vocals), Mauro Chiarugi (keyboards), Giorgio D'Adamo (bass, vocals) and Gianni Belleno (drums, vocals) decided to form a band called New Trolls, after the name of the old band of one of them, The Trolls.
After some dates as support band for the Rolling Stones, they released their debut single "Sensazioni" ( 1967), the first of a very long series of singles. The band was one of the best live acts in Italy at the time, and Hendrix-inspired guitarist Nico Di Palo was one of the first Italian guitar heroes.
Their first full-length album, Senza orario senza bandiera, came in 1968 with lyrics written for them by singer-songwriter Fabrizio de André. This release was very successful at the time. A second album simply titled New Trolls followed two years later (1970) as a compilation of their singles. By the end of the same year the band would face their first line-up change, when Mauro Chiarugi left the band. The New Trolls went on as a quartet.
In 1971 they released the album which was to be their trademark: Concerto Grosso No. 1, with classical music arrangements written by composer Luis Enriquez Bacalov. This record is still considered as one of the most important Italian rock releases ever made, for it was the first effort in Italy to fuse rock music with classical treatments.
The second line-up change came by 1972, when bassist Giorgio D'Adamo was replaced by the italio-Canadian Frank Laugelli. With the new line-up the band released Searching for a land, a double album with some live tracks and mostly sung in English. This was a disjointed album and not a great success, as most of the English-sung albums by Italian prog artists. That same year brought another New Trolls album: Ut, introducing a heavier sound similar to hard rock. Even though the release was successful the band came into creative differences and broke in two parts, with Di Palo and De Scalzi going in two different ways. A legal struggle began for the use of the band name. Di Palo and the other three band members formed Ibis, a band oriented towards hard rock. Vittorio De Scalzi formed another band called N.T. Atomic System to avoid contractual problems, keeping the style of New Trolls prior to Ut.