THE FUTURE NEVER WAITS

With an album title like The Future Never Waits, these guys surely needed to show more than that spacey stew they usually cook and serve, at least, if they really wanted to impress some serious fans of dystopia. And they do show more, indeed, in the eponymous opener, where the prevailing mood is absolutely pervaded by those Technology-Gods-Doing-Us-So-Wrong mechanical rhythms and screeching synths, gradually coalescing into a moderately interesting pastiche with Tangerine Dream leanings. But they start straying right afterwards.

Track 2, The End, reverts to the old them, with uninteresting (but powerful) ostinato rhythmic section driving the vocals loaded with apocalyptic menace. That good space rocking moment returns in Track 5, Rama (The Prophecy), after two rather dull (to me, at least) atmospheric tracks, involving some completely unnecessary free-form jazz jamming, which adds almost nothing to the proceedings, except for a bit of unavoidable somnolence. Track 6, USB1, starts like a rather bland mélange of the usual space effects, but it gains substance, and builds momentum right passing the middle. In that same vein, Track 7 Outside of Time adds some really tasty floydian vocals. A fine song, however spreading over a couple more minutes than the strictly necessary. Eerie vocals, bubbling synths and Eastern-flavored bass lines converge to haunting us in Track 8, I'm Learning To Live Today, one of the best moments of the album.

And of course, no dystopic look into the near (so much that is almost like present) future can be declared complete without a good taste of the alienation involved in such disgusting environment. And that is what we get in the last two tracks, including a good measure of acoustic guitar underpinning fantastic vocals in The Beginning, and a nice piano doing the same in Trapped In This Modern Age. And don't forget the excellent (if brief) electric guitar solo near the end.

Not a lasting revelation, but fairly enjoyable.