Music / Pinguini Tattici Nucleari

From left to right: Butt, Riccardo, Paso, Elio, Matteo, Simone.

Pinguini Tattici Nucleari ("Tactical Nuclear Penguins") are an Alternative Indie band hailing from Bergamo, Italy. They formed in 2010 and were named after a craft beer.

The band would see their first taste of mainstream success in 2019 after the release of their fourth album Fuori dall'Hype (their first under a major label), and the next year they debuted at the Sanremo Music Festival, Italy's most important music competition, getting third place.

Their songs typically feature an abundance of pop culture references and manage to be both irreverently witty while being sincere at the same time. Most songs are composed by frontman Riccardo Zanotti (although guitarist Paso is credited on one song on their third album). Even though they are primarily an indie band, they also dabble in some other genres like reggae and pop, and don't consider themselves to be limited to one specific style.

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Discography:

• Cartoni Animali^note Animal cartoons (EP, 2012)
• Il re è nudo ^note The king is nude (2014)
• Diamo un calcio all'aldilà ^note Let's kick the afterlife (2015)
• Gioventù brucata ^note Grazed youth (2017)
• Fuori dall'Hype ^note Over the hype (2019) (Re-released as Fuori dall'hype Ringo Starr with additional tracks in 2020)
• Ahia!^note Ouch! (EP, 2020)

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Current Members:

• Riccardo Zanotti - lead vocals, guitar
• Nicola Buttafuoco "Butt" ^note Pronounced "boot" - guitar
• Lorenzo Pasini "Paso" - guitar
• Simone Pagani - bass
• Matteo Locati - drums
• Elio Biffi - keyboard

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This band and their music contains examples of:

• Bilingual Bonus: "Me Want Marò Back" is half in English, to date the only song of theirs that has any English lyrics.
• Careful with That Axe: The end of "Le Gentil".
  Hai paura adesso? Hai paura adesso?^note Are you scared now? Are you scared now?
  TREMAAAAAAA!!!^note Tremble!
• Childhood Friend Romance: "Pastello Bianco" deals with the Unlucky version of the trope.
• Cloud Cuckoolander: According to his mother in an interview, Riccardo was "not an easy child to raise" for this very reason.
  • Exhibit A - the band's tour van passes a duck on an empty road and Riccardo makes them stop so he can jump out and chase it.
• Large Ham: Riccardo is this, at least in live performances, you only need to see their Sanremo 2020 performances to see this. Over the course of the week, he managed to serenade an elderly violin player, give a bunch of mimosa flowers to footballer Cristiano Ronaldo (It Makes Sense in Context), and land a kiss on TV personality Mara Vernier.
• Medley: During the 2020 Sanremo festival, they performed a medley of several classic songs from the festival's history, to honour the fact that it was the 70th edition.
• Mr. Fanservice: Elio, at least according to the rest of the band. Also helps that he's the most likely to show up topless in a music video or in concert.
• Piss-Take Rap: Presenting, "Donald Trap".
• Precision F-Strike: The title track from Fuori dall'Hype has one in the chorus.
  Perché noi siamo^note Because we are
  Fuori dall'hype, fuori dall'hype, fuori dall'hype^note Over the hype, over the hype, over the hype
  Comunque vada io non piango mai^note However it goes I'll never cry
  Fuori dall'hype, fuori dall'hype, fuori dall'hype^note Over the hype, over the hype, over the hype
  E vaffanculo a te che te ne vai^note And fuck you, you're leaving
• Pretty Boy: Some post-Sanremo interviews liked to point out that Riccardo had now become a national sex symbol. He was not comfortable with this.
• Protest Song: "Cancelleria" and "Me Want Marò Back", both of which criticise far-right politics in Italy.
• Punny Title: Gioventù brucata is a pun on the Italian title of Rebel Without a Cause, "Gioventù bruciata" ("Wasted youth").
• Reference Overdosed: Where do we even start?
  • Their Sanremo entry "Ringo Starr", as well as name-dropping the titular Beatle, also references Toto's "Africa", Italian gameshow L'Eredità, How I Met Your Mother and Batman. Not to mention the official video that replicates the "Enchantment Under the Sea" scene from Back to the Future.
  • "Test d'ingresso di medicina" ("Medical school admissions test") mentions Keira Knightley, Klaus Kinski, the "Dogme 95" movement, Citizen Kane and Franz Kafka.
  • "Tetris" references Friends, Kanye West, Robert Bresson, Ernest Hemingway, singer Raffaella Carrà, Georges Danton and Pokémon.
  • "Italia Italia" is full of Italian pop culture references, as you would expect.
  • "Ridere" ("Laugh") mentions Coldplay's "Fix You".
  • "Irene" mentions characters from Harry Potter, and the infamous assassination of former Prime Minister Aldo Moro.
  • "Verdura" ("Vegetables") references Happy Days, Google Maps, musician Lucio Dalla and Princess Mononoke.
• Rewind Gag: The video for "Tetris" is played backwards up until the final minute.
• Speech Impediment: Riccardo hath a notitheable lithp, you can hear it on any "s" thoundth.
• Title Track: Gioventù brucata and Fuori dall'Hype have one.

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