REFLECTIONS

Ever heard of Bahreini prog? While I had been aware of this group for well over a decade, I had actually never had the chance (the will or need either I must admit) to discover them until I chanced over in my library's catalogue last month. Needless to say that being such a fan of neo-prog, I wasn't all that keen on checking them out right away, but in a week where other orders where on hold, I indulged.

Reflection is the group's second album, plus a bonus track that "intrudes" into the album's track succession, without sounding out of place. While the group's origin was definitely a determining factor in my decision to rent the album, I must say that one can only be quite disappointed that the group does not present a bit of their natural and personal heritage in their music, this is obviously the oeuvre of a quintet of young modern Arabs that had been reached by the 70's prog giants and this had hit them sufficiently hard and long that in the late 80's they managed to get a group together and play their rendition of their influences and loves. And this second album is a typical product of the 80's symphonic neo-prog scene, sounding as good and professional as Pendragon, IQ or their Japanese counterparts of the era and often they sounded even better (but certainly not more adventurous or original) because some of those groups were facing hard time and artistic lows throughout the late 80's.

While I believe that Osiris' (can you imagine this group still presenting themselves to the name of a "pagan" god these days in the fundamentalist Gulf States?) best asset was its exotic provenance, they completely missed out on it, by simply developing a very- conservative prog rock. I think that they might hold a much greater place in prog's history had they instead given us an ethnic-sounding symphonic prog, much like the semi-French, semi-Turkish group Asia Minor had given us two album that are real classics. While I am reputedly not a neo-prog fan, and I think Osiris missed out on their best bet (not only in terms of their origins, but in being original also), I still think that if conventional neo-prog is your thing, you'll not regret trying them out;