HUONO PARTURI

Avant Garde is a genre, if not THE genre, that holds the medal for most "unknown" masterpieces in Prog. More than any other genre, at least in my eyes, and this, ladys and gentlemen, is one of those masterpieces.

Huono Parturi, Höyry Kone´s second and (sadly) last album is one of those strokes of genius from start to finish, no weak parts, no flaws, no good parts either... just excellent from the get go. It is true, this album is pretty much perfect, IF we are into Avant music, if not... well, we might enjoy it also, for it is, quite accesible, but something will be lacking, that certain "perfection". Strange indeed, if we take in consideration much of the most adventurous and hard to digest music, pretty much in general, falls under this category. Still, the obvious warning is present: This is not for everybody, you have to be open mindend and bla bla bla... But, as said before, if you aren´t really into Avant, but want to have a taste of it, Höyry Kone might plug you right in.

The line up is pretty much a proghead´s wet dream, for we have two guitars, one bass, drums, flutes, violin, cello and an opera like singer. Pretty damn impressive to see on paper and it sound´s even better, and even though they´ve lost two members (and instruments for that matter) from the previous album, an oboe and synths, there is really no lack of anything here, this record sounds as full as it can possibly get.

The stand outs in this album is the first, the second, the third, the fourth etc... song. In other words, they are all stand outs, they are all equally good, but some mentions must be given to Beata Viscera, the album opener, for it´s atmospheric music and impressive vocal job from Topi Lehtipuu,.. jejeje funny name, and Terva-Antti Ku Häihin Latí, the next song, a great instrumental, which will show how the rest of the album will follow. The rest is, as said before, just as good, but this two are sort to speak the best representatives of this album. One thing that must be mentioned from Hono Parturi is that no song, with the exception of Beata Viscera (6:53) and Laahustaja (6:21), is longer that 5 minutes, yet they manage to put as much music, changes and complexity into each song as humanly possible, which makes me remember Gentle Giant, for they had this ability too... and you know thats always good.