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Pendragon - Concerto Maximo CD (album) cover

CONCERTO MAXIMO

Pendragon

 

Neo-Prog

4.03 | 100 ratings

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Gatot
Special Collaborator
Honorary Collaborator
3 stars Pendragon is one of the major forces in progressive rock scene especially in the second generation of progrock after punk and new wave hit the music industry in late 70s until early 80s. The root of its music is on the symphonic prog but in a simplified form or typically called as neo-progressive music. The key characteristic of bands in this subgenre is the heavy use of keyboard combined with guitar solo in the vein of Steve Hackett (Genesis) or David Gilmour (Pink Floyd). I remember vividly how I listened to their debut album 'The Jewel' (1985) for the first time after I was so deep in love with Marillion's first two albums 'Script for A Jester's Tear' (1983) and 'Fugazi' (1984). Yeah, talking about neoprogressive music we cannot neglect the existence of Marillion, Pallas and IQ because these four bands were born almost at the same time in early 80s. While the other three bands focused on the song orientated music with catchy tagline melody, Pendragon focused heavily on guitar solo in its interlude combined with the keyboard solo. Guitar and keyboard are the key ingredients of Pendragon music while (in my opinion) most of Pendragon's musical composition are lacking in 'catchy' melody. That's why I have never been a great fan of Pendragon compared to the other three especially Marillion ? Fish era.

It seemed like 2008 was a an important year for Pendragon in their musical career as they celebrated their 30th Anniversary, on the 13th October they played the Slaski Theatre in Katowice, Poland. It was titled as 'Pure Tour' to promote their new album released in the same year. Unfortunately only three tracks from the new album were played in that gig due to time limit for the band to do the rehearsal.

For me personally I was quite impressed with the fact that the gig was well performed and excellently recorded into CD and DVD version. By the time I am writing this I have not seen the DVD yet. I am quite impressed with this live CD and some songs that I actually do not favor quite well, they sound good here. To be more specific, I'd rather like disc one compared to disc 2 because some songs on disc2 are quite poppy and bit boring to my ears.

Overall, this live CD is quite good for those who like neoprog with stunning guitar solo by Barrett and keyboard solo by Nolan. Keep on proggin' ?!

Gatot | 3/5 |

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