POD NIEBEM CZAS / THE TIME BENEATH THE SKY

When this album was released, there were little talks that it would be the last one with the superb Emilia on the vocals. This is another album released in both English (Musea Records) and Polish (except "No Quarter" of course).

This Polish band, although ranked in the neo-prog genre has a broader range of music: neo of course, but symphonic and definitely some prog folk as well. In all, they play a quite diverse and interesting music which should appeal to a lot of prog fans.

The opening "Letter from the Desert" is a good example of these folkish influences: fine fluting but dark mood and some fine (but short) vocalize part in the same line than during "Chocbym" from their debut.

The mood is very melancholic in "Still Waiting": it is a tranquil ballad in which crystal clear vocals are the best attributes. Folk influences are plenty and a track as "For Agape" is just another example. It sounds as a Polish "Mostly Autumn". But there is nothing wrong with this.

In their live album recorded during the prog conference in Mexico, the band covered already one of my fave hard-rock band. They chose a very difficult song from their repertoire, and IMO it was a total failure ("Child In Time"). This time, they are tackling another one of the genre, namely Led Zep.

They were inspired not to have chosen "Whole Lotta Love" for this exercise, and they wisely covered "No Quarter". It is not so far from the original studio version, keeping the heavy passages (and not substituting them with pastoral ones like they did for "Child"). "Quidam" will add a spacey and psychedelic instrumental break which is slightly increasing the length of the song. It is still a pleasant version.

Unfortunately, as far as own compositions are concerned, we are far from their debut and if you would except the "Credo" suite and the crescendo "Quimpromptu", there are hardly numbers to point out after their cover. Too many mellow and ambient songs.

Average album: five out of ten. I will temporarily upgrade it to three stars.