AMENOPHIS

In the same year as Yes seemed to hammer the final nail into the coffin of their classic sound with 90125, Amenophis offered up a reinvigorated take on it on this delicious album. Not content to be a mere clone band, the German unit do an excellent job of updating the Yes approach both for 80s production standards and synthesisers. In particular, they seem to have a real knack for appreciating the particular properties and possibilities of 80s synthesisers, rather than making the error of simply treating them like fancy updated versions of 1970s synths, and they really go to town with exploring the possibilities of applying this to a mid-1970s Yes sound.

As well as the music, Amenophis also update their lyrical concerns for a new generation whilst still retaining the air of fantasy which was so appealing about Yes. This is perhaps best realised on The Last Requiem, in which 1980s concerns about a resurgence of the Cold War and a potential nuclear conflagration creep into the lyrical approach and also inform some spooky sections which, outside of The Gates of Delirium, Yes never approached in terms of atmosphere (though the music here is not quite so complex as that epic).

Although the followup would prove to be a major misstep, Amenophis' debut stands as a worthy contribution to the prog revival of the early 1980s, and in particular an interesting instance of a band incorporating sonic advances of the 1980s into a prog framework without sliding into full-blown neo-prog.