Runemagick - Into Desolate Realms (2019)

The 12th album from this band from Sweden.

The band was a quartet with a lineup of drums, bass, guitars and vocals.

The band started out as a classic death metal band in the vein of Bolt Thrower, Massacre and Grave. They later moved to becoming more of a doom metal band. Which is the reason I decided to review their albums. I also knew Haavard, the owner of their record label Aftermath and his label deserve a lot of credit and support.

This album is clocking in at seventy minutes.

The music is a mix of doom metal and not so particular brutal death metal. Classic death metal, I would label it as.

This combination of death and doom metal is pretty potent. On this album, the music is also pretty epic and majestic.

The result is a decent enough album which may interest those into death and doom metal. It is not progressive music but it is still pretty eclectic music.

Check it out.

2 points

 

 

Ritual - The Story of Mr. Bogd Part 1 (2024)

 

The fifth album from this band from Sweden.

The band is a quartet with a lineup of percussion, drums, bouzoki, bass, mandolin, guitars, harmonica, harmonium, keyboards, flutes and vocals.

The band has made a comeback again after an album break of seventeen years. 

During these seventeen years, the band got a semi-classic status and rightly so. Their 2007 album The Hemulic Voluntary Band is one of the best prog rock albums ever to come from Sweden.

The music on this three-quarters of an hour long album is a mix of Scandinavian symphonic prog, art-rock and eclectic prog. There are also some hints of raga-rock and Middle-East folk music.

The music is also pretty true to what the band did on The Hemulic Voluntary Band. 

The vocals is very good and pretty operatic.  

The music is also pretty complex and epic with some classical music 'esque types of melody lines inbetween some more prog rock melodies.

Some of the music is more pastoral too.

The use of the various instruments here is very clever too.

It can be argued that this is their best album so far. It is hard to beat The Hemulic Voluntary Band though.... Nevertheless, this is a great album and a very much a triumphant return from Ritual.

This is surely be among the best albums this year.

4 points

 

 

 

Spidergawd - II (2015)

The second album from this band from Norway.

The band was a quintet with a lineup of drums, percussion, bass, guitars, keyboards, woodwinds and vocals.

This band has so far released seven albums and all of them are up for review this autumn on this blog.

I quite liked their debut album. A hard rocking album with references to the likes of The Cult, Led Zeppelin and Motorpsycho.

The band is not as heavy as they were on the rather explosive hard debut album.

There is a lot more psych rock on this album and the band sounds like Motorpsycho's manic cousin on this album. 

The hard psych rock has indeed a lot of 1960s garage influences and some surf rock influences.

The songs are this time a lot better than on their debut album. That means more than forty minutes of some good songs. The music is still pretty hard rocking but there are some song structures in this hard psych rock.

The vocals is good and the guitars and bass are really noisy and good. 

The result is a good album and one to check out if hard psych rock with some garage rock influences floats your boat.

3 points

 

 

 

Tristan Park - At The End Of The Day (1993)

The debut album from this band from USA.

The band was a sextet with a lineup of drums, percussion, bass, guitars, keyboards, synths, saxophones and vocals.

This band released three albums between 1993 and 1998 and they are all up for reviews in this blog this month.

The band is labeled as a neo-prog band in ProgArchives. So that meant I got their three albums.

The music on this thirty-four minutes long album is a mix of pomp rock, AOR and US neo-prog.

Take some Saga and add some Styx and Asia. 

The music is really melodic with some pretty good vocals. The music is also mid-tempo and neither particular hard or particular soft.

The music is at times a bit dire and makes me cringe as it has some of the worst excesses from the 1980s. Some of the songs are decent too.

This is not an album worth anyone's time unless commercial rock is their thing. I am not won over.

1.5 points

Anima Morte - Serpents in the Fields of Sleep (2022)

The fourth album from this band from Sweden.

The band was a trio with a lineup of drums, guitars, piano, organ, mellotron and synths.

Numerous guests added vibraphone, percussion, glockenspiel, bass, guitars, violin, viola, cello and woodwinds.

This band album debuted back in 2007 and has sporadicly released two more albums before this album arrived. I have reviewed them all and have given them good ratings.

The music is a mix of cinematic rock and symphonic prog. 

The band has always been inspired by Goblin and those inspirations are obvious on this album. They are coming through loud and clear. 

The music is dark in other words and is fitting for a horror movie or a similar movie genre.

The music is also epic and soaring too.

That gives us forty minutes of some decent to good instrumental music and a soundtrack that will enchance a long car journey or a more relaxed rest on the sofa.

Check out this album and their first three albums.

2.5 points

 

 

 

Animator - Gallery (1990)

The one and only album from this band from USA.

The band was a quintet with a lineup of drums, percussion, bass, guitars, keyboards and vocals.

This band comes from the state of Illinois and labeled their music somewhere beteen IQ and Pallas. Which is not the full picture...

The sound is the 1980s British neo-prog sound. Yes, Pallas and IQ is two good references. But also add a bit Marillion and a large chunk of Rush and Styx too and you get the full picture.

The vocals is good and the sound is decent enough, as it is this not so great 1980s neo-prog sound. The sound is therefore a bit thin and not so beefy.

This sixty-six minutes long album has some pretty decent songs. Eleven pieces of music to be more precise.

This is an obscure album for a good reason: It is not a good album. It is a decent album and only neo-prog fans will really seek the pleasures this album is offering. Their kind of pleasures, that is.

I am not won over by this album, though.

2 points

Windmill. The - Mindscapes (2024)

The fourth album from this band from Norway.

The band is a sextet with a lineup of drums, bass, guitars, keyboards, flutes, saxophones and vocals.

A guest added acoustic guitar on one song.

I believed that this band had split up as the main man is so involved with promoting gigs. Gigs with many famous prog rock bands from agroad and Norway. Great gigs.

The band has returned again after a six years long break. The band album debuted back in 2010 and is not the most productive band around. But who cares as long as their albums is very good. That goes for their first three albums.

Mindscapes follows in the same direction as those three albums.

Take Scandinavian symphonic prog and add some heavy-prog too. Kaipa and Høst springs to mind throughout this album.

The vocals is very good throughout. Ditto for the flutes. 

The twenty-two minutes long Fear occupies more than half of this album and it is a very good, epic and complex piece of symphonic prog. The three other songs are more in the vein of heavy prog and more catchy.

The music is always interesting and engaging. 

This is indeed a very good album. I wish this band welcome back and I hope we will get some more albums from them in the upcoming years.

3.5 points

Tompox - Reincarnation (2019)

The third and final album from this band from Hungary.

The band was a sextet with a lineup of drums, bass, guitars, keyboards, flute, saxophone and vocals.

A female vocalist added her vocals on one track.

The band returned again with a seventy minutes long album. An album in the same vein as their first two albums.

This means instrumental music in the borderland between cinematic rock, folk rock, symphonic prog and fusion. The album closes with a jazz and musicals inspired song with female vocals. It is not a good song.

There are some sporadic voices on this mostly instrumental album. The music is dynamic and it has some good flutes too. 

Some of the music here is a bit too run-of-the-mill. Some of the music is rather good and this is their best album. An album well worth checking out.

2.5 points

 

Tasavallan Presidentti - The Lost 1971 Studio Session (2022)

The sixth album from this band from Finland.

The band was a quintet with a lineup of drums, cowbells, bass, guitars, organ, piano, saxophones, flute and vocals.

This album is a recording made in 1971 for the YLE Broadcasting Company in Finland. Their first vocalist Frank Robson is on vocals.

There is not much vocals on these four tracks though. 

The music is heavy and hard jazz rock. Fusion as you may want to label it. 

The music is also eclectic with some very obvious King Crimson influences. 

There are also some more pastoral dense jazz pieces here. Some really eclectic jazz, indeed.

This is not an official album. My guess is that these recordings was not released back in 1973 because the music here is far more pure jazz and eclectic prog than the band had released up to then... and later. These four pieces of music does not fit the picture, indeed the image of the band they gave on their semi-classic Lambertland album.

Thankfully, Svart Records gave these four pieces of music it's rightful release and the result is a good album. An album quite different from the five other albums but still a good album. 

I really like this band and may get their live albums too for my private enjoyment. Lambertland was their crowning glory though and a semi-classic album from Scandinavia. 

Check out this album.

3 points

 

 

 

Yobrepus - A Rhizome Revolution Part 2 (2024)

The third album from this band from Norway.

The band is a quartet with a lineup of drums, percussion, bass, guitars, keyboards, synths, loops, saxophone and vocals.

A handful of guests added guitars, violas, violins, cello, loops and piano.

This is part two and the final part of this two parts long series of albums. 

I reviewed part one back in March this year and I recently got part two from their record label.

The music is again art-rock with some eclectic prog, psych rock and a lot of electronica. 

The sound is contemporary and the guitars and vocals is both good.

The music is also both melancholic and dark. It is also complex and not particular melodic.

The thirty-seven minutes long album can also be divided into three parts with a more melodic part starting the album before the music changes to a more eclectic, complex electronica landscape before the album ends with a more psych and art rock based landscape.

The result is a good album. It is not as good as part one but it is still a good album and one to check out.

3 points

 

 

Spooky Tooth - You Broke My Heart So I Busted Your Jaw (1973)

The fifth album from this band from Great Britain.

The band was a quintet with a lineup of drums, bass, guitars, harmonica, organ, piano and vocals.

Some female vocalists added their voices too.

And the band played on....... 

Their last album was not exactly a triumph. Neither artistic or commercially. So the band returned again with this strange titled album.

What we get here is a mix of psych rock, blues rock, hard rock..... and soul and gospel.

The vocals is pretty good and the band does their best on some not so interesting songs.

The soul and gospel inspired rock here shows how far the band has left their roots and their best days behind them.

A couple of decent songs is the only acceptable pieces of music on this rather dire album.

1.5 points

 

 

Tangerine Dream - Electronic Meditation (1970)

The debut album from this band from Germany.

The band was a trio with a lineup of percussion, bass, guitars, violin, cello, farfisa organ, piano and some voices.

This band is the biggest ever band in the electronic prog rock genre and legends. This is also a genre I have successfully been avoiding, with a handful of exceptions, since I started out reviewing prog albums in ProgArchives and later in this blog which I started twelve years ago.

I now feel I have to review their albums and I will at least try to review all their proper albums and a couple of their movie soundtrack albums as this band has released close to eighty albums. I have seventeen of them in the first batch I will review this and next year.

This album includes the three big ones in the scene, Klaus Schule, Edgar Froese and Conrad Schnitzler. We get five compositions here, taking us to thirty-seven minutes worth of music.

The music is pretty linear and the electronica has some krautrock influences. There are some chiming guitar solos in this pretty dissonant ambient landscape.

The music is, for me, surprisingly good. Not really good but this is still an album somewhere between decent and good. It is also a good introduction to me who are not particular fond of this genre. It is not as alien to me as I expected. Long may that feeling continue on their next albums.

2.5 points

 

 

 

 

Aha!! - Keep Nose In Front (1984)

The one and only album from this band from Norway.

The band was a quintet with a lineup of drums, bass, guitars, keyboards and saxophone.

A guest added some sampled voices too.

This album was released on a small jazz label at the same time as the far more famous pop band with a similar name, A-Ha, got their breakthrough with the hit single Take On Me. One small country, two bands with a similar name...

Aha!!'s take on me..... sorry, take on music is a mix of jazz and fusion. The band has some of the more famous Norwegian jazz musician and a guitarist who got a national breakthrough in a soul-pop band some years later. 

The music is pretty good throughout these forty-two minutes. There are some good acoustic bass, guitars and saxophone solos here. The music is in the mid-tempo range.

The sound is not the best and this album is only available on a hard to find LP. There are far better jazz and fusion albums out there and this album is obscure for a good reason. It is still worth checking out. 

2.5 points

Actionfredag - Turist i Eget Liv (2023)

The debut album from this band from Norway.

The band was a sextet with a lineup of drums, bass, guitars, keyboards, male and female vocals.

Some guests added glockenspiel, harp, violin, melodica, flute, woodwinds and vocals.

This is another new band to me and a very pleasant surprise. And I am not alone here as the album now seems to have been pulled from Bandcamp and will get a record label release later this year on CD, LP and digital download. This with 1-2 more songs but otherwise unchanged. 

The music here is playful Canterbury prog and jazz. Both prog and jazz is well represented here.

There are some playful good vocals in addition the mostly instrumental music here. The vocals are in Norwegian and pretty witty.

The music is very lively, jazzy and playful. The use of glockenspiel and the many other instruments here is very clever.

The music on this forty minutes long album is indeed very good and this band can, on the basis of this album, be added to the long list of talented Norwegian bands.

3.5 points

 

 

Sjs - A Sequence Of Mistakes (2024)

The third album from this band from Australia.

The band is a quintet with a lineup of drums, bass, guitars, keyboards and vocals.

A guest delivered female vocals on two songs.

This band is lead by Stuart J Stawman whose initials gives the name to the band. Three albums has so far been released and they are all up for reviews in the coming weeks. 

I have yet to be impressed by this band as their first two albums were pretty pedestrian. 

The music on this, their new album is a mix of art-rock, psych rock and ambient music. 

The musical landscape, the soundscape, is a desolate landscape. The only signs of life is small forms of life. Transferred to music, the melodies and vocals is very softly spoken. The songs are not much different from each other and this albums therefore has one big piece of music, a fifty minutes long piece of music.

This album is full of details and breathes through them. 

The guitar and vocal harmonies are good to very good. Despite of being pretty ambient and softly spoken, these details really makes this album to what it is. A good album. 

This album is most of all an album that requires the full attention from the listener as it is a pretty useless album used as background noise. Don't do that. Approach it as one album you need to give 100 % of your attention. Don't drive anywhere with this album on the car stereo.

This is indeed a good album and one to check out.

3 points

 

 

Tompox - The Dark Side Of The Sun (2013)

The second album from this band from Hungary.

The band was a quintet with a lineup of drums, percussion, bass, guitars, keyboards and flute.

A handful of guests added guitars, keyboards, saxophone and narration. A choir also added their voices too.

This is the Solaris bass player Tamas Pocs side project and the band has released three albums. All of them reviewed this month in this blog.

I was not particular impressed by their run-of-the-mill instrumental progressive rock album. Hence, I had no expectations to this album.

We get more of the same here. ELP, Camel and some Dream Theater. But the band has added something extra too... 

There are some really good guitars here and guitar solos. There are also some Hungarian folk rock too here. The choir bit is a bit cheesy but it still adds some personality and colours to the album. The same does the flutes.

Not everything here is good. Nevertheless, this is an improvement on their debut album and an album well worth checking out.

2.5 points

 

 

 

 

Tasavallan Presidentti - Six Complete (2006)

The fifth and final studio album from this band from Finland.

The band was a quintet with a lineup of drums, bass, guitars, keyboards, saxophone, flute and vocals.

This album is a one off album with the original lineup. That means Frank Robson is back on vocals again. This album was followed by some gigs and live albums. 

An archive recording was later released too and I will review that later this month too.

Six Complete was originally released as an EP under the name Six before some more songs were added and it became a fifty minutes long album.

The eight vocals tracks here takes us back to this band's beginning as a blues rock band. The vocals is very good and the songs are decent enough.

The flute dominated instrumental track Dance is a mix of Jethro Tull and Camel. It is a fairly good track and the highligth on this decent enough album. 

This is an album well worth checking out from a band who gave us two good albums and three decent albums. 

2 points

Amarok - Hope (2024)

The seventh album from this band from Poland.

The band is a quartet with a lineup of gongs, drums, percussion, bass, guitars, violin, cello, keyboards and vocals.

I have followed this band with interest for the last years and albums. This band is one of the better and highest rated bands in the art-rock and progressive rock scene in Poland.

The music is a mix of art-rock and neo-prog. There are also a lot of electronica here which gives the music a futuristic sound.

The music is mid-tempo and pretty melancholic. Neo-prog from Poland has always been melancholic. Amarok's music on this album is following in this tradition.

The vocals is good and the music is pretty catchy at times. The electronica elements is adding another dimention to their music.

The result is an hour with very good music. This is an album who more than confirm how good this band and the art-rock and progressive rock scene in Poland is.

Check it out.

3.5 points

 

Runemagick - Evoked From Abysmal Sleep (2018)

The 11th album from this band from Sweden.

The band was a trio with a lineup of drums, bass, guitars and vocals.

A guest added guitars on two tracks.

This duo has so far given us some solid death and doom metal albums. Solid but unspecatular albums. 

The music here is mid-tempo and brutal. There is still some melodic sensibilities here. 

Thankfully, they have ended their flirting with goth doom metal. What remains is a mix of death and doom metal.

The music is honest and brutal. The vocals is not too guttural.

The music on this three quarters of an hour long album is by no means the best mix of death and doom metal you will ever hear. Nevertheless, this is a decent enough no-nonsense album who deliver the goods. Something I respect this band for.

2 points

 

 

Sleeping Pandora - Signs In The Sky (2020)

The fifth album from this one-man-band from Germany.

Mathias Rosmann did the guitars, piano, synths and programming here.

Sleeping Pandora is his cosmic space rock progject. He is also involved in other bands and project inbetween releasing a couple of Sleeping Pandora albums every year. That was what he did until last year at least.

The music is mainly cosmic outer space ambient space rock with some improvised guitar figures, harmonies and riffs on the top of them.

The music in this seventy-five minutes long album may sound a bit repetitive and samey. But listen very carefully and there is some good variations here.

That said... seventy-five minutes is a bit too long for music like this. A bit more focus on quality instead of quantity would have benefited this album.

Nevertheless, this is still a decent enough album. It is not his best album, so far.

2 points

Elysian Fields - Terra: The Sage Of Sol III (2019)

The third album from this band from USA.

The band was a trio with a lineup of drums, bass, guitars, keyboards and vocals.

The leader of the band is Mark Jeffrey Dye, the sound technician for the likes of Van Halen and Gino Vannelli. He has also done the sound for some movies. The Elysian Fields albums are almost impossible to find too but I got two of them and both are reviewed this month for this blog.

I think the band altogether has released six albums.

Their music is a mix of US symphonic prog, musicals and pomp rock.

This ninety minutes long album has a lot of all of these elements. Mostly pomp rock, though.

The music is epic and bold throughout.

The vocals is good and the trio does a good job on their instruments. The quality of the songs are somewhere between decent and good. This album is an improvement on their debut album and all their albums should be made more accessible so more people can enjoy their music. A Bandcamp page would be nice, Mark.

2.5 points

Eating.Seats - Church (2023)

The second album from this band from Italy.

The band is a quartet with a lineup of drums, bass, guitars, keyboards and vocals.

Their debut album, reviewed in this blog, was released in 2008. So there is fifteen years between the albums.

This album has been released on both CD and Bandcamp. 

The music this time is a mix of psych rock, post rock and indie rock.

The music is pretty hard and intense with a lot of chugging and screaming guitars. The music is also pretty melodic too.

There is no progressive rock here though and there is not many good details. 

The vocals are pretty good and the band does a good job on these seven songs, altogether forty minutes of decent music. It feels like a run-of-the-mill album released on an overcrowded scene with many, many similar sounding other albums released during the last ten years. I am not particular impressed.

2 points

Bondage Fruit - Bondage Fruit VII (2024)

The sixth studio album from this band from Japan.

The band was a quintet with a lineup of percussion, vibraphone, drums, bass, guitars and violin.

This band started out as a zeuhl band back in 1994 and has been operating in that and the jazz area since their debut album from the same year. They are therefore regarded as one of the founding bands in the Japanese zeuhl and avant-garde scene.

I really like this band and their previous five studio albums and one live album is very much recommended. You will find my reviews in this blog and in ProgArchives.

There are some zeuhl on this album. Nevertheless, the main themes here are fusion in the same vein as Mahavishnu Orchestra. 

This means a lot of violins and guitars. 

The main difference is the use of the vibraphone on this one hour long album. There is a lot of it here and that adds a lot of quality to the music.

The music is dynamic throughout and follows in the best of the 1970s fusion and jazz traditions. 

The result is a very good album. Another very good album from this band and one to cherish. This band is really something special.

3.5 points

Taï Phong - Dragons of the 7th Seas (2021)

The sixth album from this band from France.

The band was a sextet with a lineup of drums, percussion, bass, guitars, synths and vocals.

This is so far the latest album from this band from France. 

I reviewed the previous album, the 2013 album Return Of The Samurai, some days ago and I was not impressed. It is a fairly horrid album.

The band continued with their mix of The Corrs and Mostly Autumn, a mix debuted on the 2013 album, on Dragons Of The 7th Seas too.

That means female vocals over some soft celtic folk coloured pop music. The music is soft and slow. Ballads like throughout with only a few flashes of mid-tempo and harder music.

The quality is close to being abysmal and the band has managed to make an even worse album than their 2013 opus.

In short, there is absolute nothing here who reminds us about the band who released two fairly good albums in the 1970s. This album is a turkey.

1 point

Sjs - The Unlikely Event (2021)

The second album from this band from Australia.

The band was a quartet with a lineup of drums, bass, guitars, keyboards and vocals.

Two guests added congas and keyboards.

This band is lead by Stuart J Stawman whose initials gives the name to the band. Stuart J Stawman has been a sound technician for the likes of Tears For Fears and David Gilmour. 

The music on this album is closer to Mike Oldfield than any of those above mentioned entities.

The music is pretty narrow in it's expression and there is some goth and ambience in the music too. 

The music is rhythm based and it is full of experimental rhythms. The melodies are pretty narrow in scope adn there is hardly any variations here.

The music is decent enough without really impressing me or ever becoming good. I am not won over by this album.

2 points

 

 

Flying Norsemen. The - The Flying Norsemen (2024)

The debut album from this band from Norway. 

The band is a quintet with a lineup of drums, bass, guitars, theremin, narrations and vocals.

The record company, Apollon Records, sent me this album with the note that the members were previously ski jumpers. Hence the band name. And they are not joking... One of the members, Tommy Ingebrigtsen, are world champion in ski jump from 1995 (I still remember it well). He is also the son of one of the greatest rock'n'roll vocalists in Norway. Yes, Dag Ingebrigtsen from The Kids and TNT. 

The band name also reminds me about another Norwegian band with a similar name, The Flying Norwegians. That band was a country-rock band from the 1970s with some limited success in USA.

Arabs In Aspic is though the band that mostly springs to mind when it comes to the music on this four tracks, forty minutes long album. The Flying Norsemen was indeed formed as an Arabs In Aspic tribute band.

The music is spacey and melodic. The vocals are in Norwegian and pretty good. The music is also pretty melodic and not as hard as Arabs In Aspic.

The music is pretty good throughout and this is an album well worth checking out. I hope we will hear a lot more from both this band and Arabs In Aspic in the coming years.

3 points

 

 

Motorpsycho - Little Lucid Moments (2008)

The 13th album from this band from Norway.

The band was a trio with a lineup of drums, bass, guitars, keyboards and vocals.

The band stripped down to the basics on this album and went on full sonic attack. 

The title track is a twenty-two minutes long suite. The remaining three tracks is on average thirteen minutes long... each. That gives us one hour worth of music. 

The music is a mix of garage rock, heavy prog, fusion and in particular.... psych rock. It is a sonic assault on the senses too as the music is both hard and noisy.

The band has their very own sound and nobody else sounds like them. They got their own niche, own genre in the music landscape. 

Motorpsycho's music is always full of interesting details too. There is almost an overflow of interesting details here. The intense vocals also helps the band a lot.

Some of the stuff here is very good. That goes for most of the title track, the suite. Some of the stuff is not that good. The end result is a good album and one I would like to return to. This album is pretty typical for their albums, I have heard and a good intro to them.

Check it out.

3 points

 

 

Tompox - Hungarian Eclectic (2012)

The debut album from this band from Hungary.

The band was a quintet with a lineup of drums, percussion, bass, guitars, keyboards and flute.

A handful of guests provided congas, guitars and vocals.

This is the Solaris bass player Tamas Pocs side project and the band has released three albums. All of them are up for reviews this month in this blog.

The music is mostly instrumental with the exception from a decent version of King Crimson's classic song Epitaph. 

The music here is a mix of progressive rock, progressive metal, neo-classical music and fusion.

ELP, Camel and Dream Theater springs to mind here. 

The music is not particular interesting though as it is a bit run-of-the-mill instrumental rock. The music is dynamic though and the band showcases a lot of promise. There is nothing that sets this album and indeed this band apart and that is why this is a decent album and nothing more than that.

2 points

Elysian Fields - Homage (2005)

The debut album from this band from USA.

The band was a quartet with a lineup of drums, bass, guitars, keyboards and vocals.

This band has self-released their albums and they are difficult to find. I have managed to find another one of their many albums and that one will be reviewed later this month.

The leader of the band is Mark Jeffrey Dye, the sound technician for the likes of Van Halen and Gino Vannelli. He has also done the sound for some movies.

This one hour long album is a homage to the great prog and pomp rock bands of this world. The likes of Styx, Kansas, Genesis, Yes and even Gentle Giant, Focus and King Crimson. Each of the eleven original songs has elements of the respective band's music. The twelfth song is a cover of Across The Universe by The Beatles.

The music is mostly in the US neo-prog and pomp rock vein.

The vocals are a bit in the Jon Anderson vein. The sound is a bit too much in the 1990 plastic fantastic vein. 

The result is a decent album which will please the fans of US prog rock. Check it out.

2 points

Eating.Seats - Secrets about September (2008)

The debut album from this band from Italy.

The band was a quartet with a lineup of drums, bass, guitars, keyboards and vocals.

This band has so far released two albums through Bandcamp. The last one was released last year and a review will follow later this month.

The music is psych rock in the vein of early Pink Floyd anno the Astronomy Domine track.  

The music is plodding along pretty slowly and pedestrian in that vein throughout these sixty minutes. The sound is downtuned and not the best. The vocals are decent enough.

There is not much to enjoy here and this album is very obscure and that for a good reason. It is simply an album best forgotten. 

But as this is a name-your-price album, you can check out this half-decent album yourself by downloading it from their Bandcamp page.

1.5 points

Coma Rossi - Void (2024)

The second album from this band from India.

The band is a duo with a lineup of drums, bass, guitars, harmonium, keyboards and vocals.

A guest added vocals on one track.

I really love their very good self-titled debut from 2018. See my review in # 2 of this blog.

Their music is a mix of post-rock, psych-rock and some post-metal. It is like Sigur Ros meets Riverside, Porcupine Tree and Pink Floyd.  

There is a lot of guitar walls here and that is the main instruments who drives the music forward. 

It is these mid-tempo walls of guitars which really defines this band and album. There are some pastoral moments too and some heavy metal sounding moments too. 

The music are pretty good throughout this fifty minutes long album and it is clear that the band has something to offer the world. I hope they still continue to release albums in the future.

2.5 points

 

 

Tai Phong - Return of the Samurai (2013)

The fifth album from this band from France.

The band was a quartet with a lineup of guitars, piano, keyboards, synths, programming and vocals.

Numerous guests added drums, bass, guitars, banjo, piano. keyboards and vocals.

The band reformed again for a new album, thirteen years after their comeback album. The band has taken long breaks between their albums as we had to wait another eight years again for their latest album. More about that album in my review of that album later this month.

The music on this album is glam-pop music with some The Corrs influences. In short, some folk rock influences. There are a few goth influences here too.

The music is rather catchy and very commercial and slick.

The music is not entirely a disaster as there is some decent songs here. Some of the pieces of music on this fifty minutes long album is cringe worthy and something I would like to forget.

This is not anywhere as good as their first two albums and this album is best avoided.

1.5 points

 

 

Sjs - The World Without (2017)

The debut album from this band from Australia.

The band was a quartet with a lineup of percussion, drums, bass, guitars, keyboards and vocals.

Some guests added guitars, strings, vocals and children choir.

This band is lead by Stuart J Stawman whose initials gives the name to the band. Three albums has so far been released and they are all up for reviews in the coming weeks. 

Stuart J Stawman has been a sound technician for the likes of Tears For Fears and David Gilmour. His music on Sjs is not far away from these two entities and their music.

The music on this one hour long album is a mix of indie rock and psych rock. 

There is a lot of samples and distorted vocals over some warped rhythms and melodies. There is not much variation on this album as the music is pretty much narrow and sounds the same throughout this album.

There are some good guitar solos here and the vocals are pretty good.

This is an acceptable debut album with some good stuff and some decent stuff. Check it out.

2.5 points

Phaedra - Norn (2024)

The third album from this band from Italy.

The band is a sextet on this album with a lineup of drums, percussion, bass, guitars, keyboards and vocals.

Phaedra has returned again eleven years after their last album, the 2013 album Beyond The Storm. I have reviewed that album and their 2010 debut album Ptah in # 1 of this blog.

I really rate this band and their two first albums was both very good RPI albums. 

Their music on Norn is classic RPI. 

The music is both symphonic, epic and complex. The tempo is both mid-tempo and pastoral. The longest song on this one hour long album is clocking in at twenty-four minutes. The four other songs are also around the ten minutes mark.

The male and female vocals here is great. Both the operatic and the more clean vocals. The lyrics are in Italian and that suits the music perfect.

There are some keyboards generated moog and mellotrons here too and that gives the music a great classic 1970s RPI sound.

The result is a great album and perhaps the best RPI album of the year... so far. This is an obligatory purchase for anyone into RPI.... and symphonic prog.

4 points