FADING BEAUTY

This Germany band was initially a progressive rock band and it later turned out to be a heavy metal one. There is not much that I can get on the history this band which was formed in 1967 as stated in metal library. Fading Beauty is their debut album with the music is mainly comprising long keyboard-drenched music which to me like a jam session. As it was came out in the era of vinyl LP I can understand that the music was produced to fit the LP duration i.e roughly 2 x 22 minutes. Therefore the band made it two tracks at the first side and another long epic at the second side. The first two tracks Autumn Fantasia: Fading Beauty (12:06) and Autumn Fantasia: Lingering Cold (10:26) are actually quite boring to my ears as they are very weak in composition: there are no segments that the band have expressed the music well as they turn out to be like jamming with no prescribed or predetermined tagline melody to follow. It's fine actually if they can demonstrate good musicianships along the way that they produce good composition. Only at the last track Tharsis (21:30) the band is quite successful in creating an interesting music even though not compelling enough to my ears. It seems to me that the band actually can make the music just with 10 minutes duration. In order to fit the full side 2 then they continue the other 10 minutes as the last portion of Tharsis. It is not well done actually, that's why the later part sounds awkward to me.

Overall, this is only good for those who want to have an archive of vintage music and not too much paying attention on how good the composition is. This one deserves two stars. Keep on proggin' ...!

Peace on earth and mercy mild - GW