SPAM

Spam is the third exulting album from Polish prog band Lizard - third one that really counts, that is - getting released in 2006. Despite there are no second meanings to Spam being a pure and full new creation, Lizard progress and improve, overall, thanks to what they offer, and how they play. More than anything, Lizard become by now your good entertainer in modern prog rock with a combination of classic artwork and sensible originality, once three works in three consecutive years are all good or better (in fact, in comparison, you could, sometimes, randomly consider one of the three works the master-work, another one a special bomb in the band's career, and the last one not quite the same as the others, still with the same line of music and entry - to describe Spam realistically though, it's not the master-work in any way...). Lizard are now convincingly active and incredibly supportive to the idea that good music can come during many years, regardless of any transitions. Secondly, Spam underlines what Lizard have achieved to do since Tales From Artichoke Wood: to play a bit of Polish prog magic that hasn't got anything to do with neo-plat music, but aims a lot higher. Spam is the sort of minor work (not to understand weak) that plays nevertheless a major style - a style Lizard breezed throughout their entire mature, modern period.

In this style, Lizard reunite with their influences and main drives, reuse their best elements and their modern quality and refresh their manner, for an album that draws and defines its qualities and bumps with these precise etiquettes. The reuniting part would be the grasp of previous concepts and of their rarely faded classic mark-points such as King Crimson - Spam being not a Crimson album and not coming close to the daring and flagrant experiment that happened in Psychopuls, still combining Crimson flavors with classic prog modest shapes and other pieces of music, creating at least the humidity and obvious approach in prog. By this length, Spam is tensely good (just good, that is), but fortunately isn't of a recycled essence. The reuse of their best stuff only implies a good energy that the band still has after a mostly splendid experience over the previous albums. Sort of coming after two previous master-works, Lizard have in them the full power to something interesting, deeper than on the surface and chemical in their new record (maybe because the master-works weren't, after all, true masterpiece which to exhaust everything about the band's primo qualities). Finally, by snapping a new kind of beautiful, gifted and cool music, Spam benefits and suffers, I'd say, the most. Sounding entirely like a cool, calm wave on which Lizard work with grace, there's no remorse in telling that they make little new progressive inside their concepts and concerns, nevertheless Spam is decidedly that kind of an album. As best as we make a good deed out of mentioning Spam's vibrating essence (art rock, with class prog splinters, with a dominant Crimson factor, but also various moments of folk, plain rock, pop or neo, light or dark nuances etc.), as usual we have to mention that the refined stability inside their worthy and mature style pulls the album to its moderate place. In a sum of words, chronicles can call Spam a new success, tastes can like it much, a little or not at all, but objectively Spam is good, but not excellent, pleasant, but nowhere near surprising (even in Lizard's repertoire).

Less excessive in style notes, Spam becomes actually a stereo, conceptual-looking and tastefully progressive album. For one thing, Lizard don't give up on the usual numberings, producing six pieces that are part of an entire SPAM catalogue, out of which the last one are the really precious and notable - in those, times stands longer and the mark is made on charming or crafty tunes that evolve or suscitate, in a valuable essence of art rock and prog rock. In rest, the movements are either fast, either slow, ether strong, either romantic, either vital, either filling. The vocals are recoiling to a mixture of poetry/artistic singing and very open/cheap lyricism, thus the instrumental rock is overall the best to credit.

Three stars and a lovely, natural, profound shape in which this Polish band stay fit after so much background. Worth every spin, but totally understandable how the previous two major releases are the better beat.