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Autumn Breeze - The Molotov Ribbentrop Pact CD (album) cover

THE MOLOTOV RIBBENTROP PACT

Autumn Breeze

 

Symphonic Prog

4.10 | 32 ratings

From Progarchives.com, the ultimate progressive rock music website

volcanic 2016
4 stars Itīs been a couple of years since we last heard from Sweden's pride "Autumn Breeze", The trilogy 20:12 was an ambitious work of art and supposedly a Hugh project for the key members involved, probably hard to top!? But even this 2015 release takes off in a conceptual direction, a theme album with focus on the Second World War, and a total of 21 parts is laid down on this CD. It is not an easy album to deal with in any way, the theme is serious stuff and the atmosphere is very harsh, it needs repeated listening and you need a lot of time! This is not the kind of record you have in the background, you got to concentrate and listen active, and if you do so, "The Molotov Ribbentrop Pact" will take you on a scary trip into the darkest places of man's psycho. I can spot some Gentle Giant influences in some moments, other parts like "I've signed a pact with the devil" sounds like "Pete Brown & Piblokto" into the 21 century.

There are some beautiful distinctive heavy guitar parts splattered around on this album as well as some sensitive fingerpicking acoustic parts (Paulina Semszjuchina) and the brilliant keyboard/piano playing of Jan Warnqvist is as evident as ever, especially on tracks like Achtung (Ribbentrops Song 1). The song "Katyn" have a tasty memorable repetitive chorus that stick to your mind and if there was a single picked from this record it certainly should be this one. The final track, that is also the title track of the album is a heavy progressive monster with a modern sound in the territory of "Therion" or even "Ghost" but also reminiscent of "Zappa" (the "Overnight Sensation" period) with intricate playing, and again I am impressed of how great these people are at handling their instruments. After the last short tale from Adolf Hitler you are left totally breathless, wondering what an intense journey you've just been taken on!?

Without doubt this is the darkest work we have seen from Autumn Breeze so far, they have really succeed in creating a schizophrenic atmosphere with this concept and the massive repetitive lyric lines are hammered into your head like mantras from an insane dictator! I cannot foresee which direction they would take after this, but the path is set and it suites them well.

Peter Wallgren March 2016

volcanic 2016 | 4/5 |

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