La Etruria Criminale Banda could be your average brass band. There's the bass drum, the oom-pah oom-pah line, and the requisite horns playing the melody. But then something weird happens.

It's as if a throat singing Mongolian Tom Waits steps into the studio to join the party. That's the sound this band wants, something you've never heard before.
La Etruria Criminale Banda is from Rome. And depending on the night you see them perform, the group could be big as eight members, or huge, nineteen on stage the night I saw them.

Up front were Nando di Cosimo, singer and trumpeter. Holding the baton is his brother Giovanni di Cosimo, composer, arranger and conductor.

Giovanni: We have a very huge band. We need a very huge soundcheck.

And from that soundcheck, they get a huge noise. After all, that's why di Cosimo stuck "criminale" in the band's name.

Giovanni: Criminale is a criminal, because the sound is really criminal and violent. Yes, very violent. Ha ha ha. From the brass and the electronic deejay...

Marco: As we say in the United States, the sound is in your face.

Giovanni: Yes, slap your face.

Take the band's number "Ballhara Criminale." The music seems to approach from far away. And it builds up slowly. Brass layers on brass. And then La Etruria Criminale Banda explodes. So where does this energy come from?

Musically, Etruria is home to many traditional styles of Italian music. But namechecking an ancient region of Italy is simply the band's way of showing how far back their influences go. You can pick out old styles like pizzica, tarantella, and tango. Once composer and arranger Giovanni di Cosimo dips into that vat of sounds, anything is possible he says. Di Cosimo says he and the band take the music and rework it. We try and make a new music, he says. It's got roots, but it's a new presentation of roots music. He calls it post popular music.

Add to that what Giovanni di Cosimo and his brother Nando were listening to at home when they were growing up. Their parents guided them through opera; and Giovanni Di Cosimo confesses that operatic melodrama creeps into the sound of La Etruria Criminale Banda. When he and Nando were older, they discovered avant garde big bands: the Sun Ra Arkestra, Lester Bowie and the Art Ensemble of Chicago, and the Gil Evans Orchestra. Opera, American avant-jazz, and old Italian musical forms. You can see why La Etruria Criminale Banda sounds the way it does.

The group doesn't tour a lot, and there are no plans to play stateside yet. With the full on 19 players, it's a big group to transport. If only La Etruria Criminale Banda could convert their stage energy into fuel. Then they could fly their own cargo plane many times around the globe.