HERETIK VOLUME III: THE SENTENCE

This, the last part of the Trilogy:Nathan Mahl:"The Sentence". Which is Guy Le Blanc (keyboard extrodinaire) headmaster and sometime Camel co-operator,in the front seat and keyboardmaster!! Marc Spenard on guitars and things!! Danile lacasse on drums! All in all, this record is a wonderfull example of prog in its prime!! There are several beautiful lines in favor of prog!! Now, theres no tracks to be mentioned...as this is a whole album! By that, i mean this album is by far, a concept act!! These guys are playing extremely well and the themes are good!! Guy Le Blanc are indeed a keyboard-god!!! Now i maybe biased ,but i think i LOVE this band!! So ,some of you may have heard of "the heretic" part I and II..or indeed... have heard some of the music!!! Anyhow...this is PROGMUSIC at its best!!! If you´re fond of keyboard music...you´ll love this!! End of story!! GET THIS GEM !!!!!

OK it seems that my score is a bit low (anyway in the average), cause their previous first chapter of this trilogy was almost excellent and characterized also by a few uneven episodes...otherwise, as the atmosphere is the same here and the dialogues well indicated also inside the pretty booklet of the cd, I should give this album another half star.Although yet this time the 54 minute long suite is a bit prolix and you can find the same remarkable music features typically arranged by Le Blanc in the same manner (and such usual epic themes too),becoming tiring at the end!! In fact, talking about the direct harmonic solutions by Guy Le Blanc, the ideas are equal to those ones inside the preliminary episode (chapter 1) and superior than the disappointing second episode (you don't find the mix of "heterogonous" and uneven music breaks through, that you can listen to within this latter, sometimes bad, episode...);nevertheless the repetition of the themes give us the sense of tiredness, hidden behind the corner.Certainly the direct approach is more modern and the profusion of time changes and fusion/symphonic complex music passages are able to let me change idea. The main reason of a keyboardist within a progressive contest should consist of arranging, composing and possibly concluding the whole "puzzle" of harmonic and melodic themes, in order to complete a suite...the model of classic music can help us in such task, but the common listener who is not into such manner of treating progressive music, should remain perplex anyway!!

At the end this album is very interesting, but sometimes too much obvious, being anyway far superior than the average concerning the insipid Neo-Prog works today...however you can decide according to your personal tastes and probably you could find that such recent issue is well worth checking out !!

This was my first introduction to Nathan Mahl, due to my affection for the one song album and the technical prowess required to sustain tension throughout. So was I impressed with this mostly instrumental piece of music? Yeah, mostly. Being instrumental makes it have double the difficulty of keeping my attention, and at 54 minutes in length, it's not exactly a cozy easy-to- immerse-in tune. But for the most part I was, and still do occasionally have the patience to sit through its length and enjoy it on the way. It's an interesting musical style, I'm not privy to all the musical back knowledge to know why exactly I find it enjoyable, but it definitely was on the first and following listens. Playing it as I write this to remind me that it is a challenging and difficult single song album to get immersed in, but once you do, have to add it to your collection somewhere in the instrumental segment. Perhaps my two quarrels with the piece is the lack of vocals and the drag that comes with being mostly instrumental and 54 minutes long. Apart from that, there's plenty to keep happy about for most prog fans.