REDEMPTION

Mystery is a veteran French-Canadian Progressive rock band, formed by multi-instrumentalist (guitars, keyboards, bass) Michel St-Pere back in 1989, and with a changing backing lineup over the years. Their sound features a melodic symphonic prog approach with liberal doses of 80's AOR (Styx, Asia, Rush, Saga) and 90's Neo-Prog styles mixed in, creating a melodic and accessible type of symphonic prog with slick production, catchy melodies, soaring ballads, and proggy instrumental flourishes. Their first album, Theatre of the Mind, came out in 1996, and this new album, their 8th follows their previously most recent, Lies and Butterflies (2018). The current lineup, which has been steady since 2014 consists of St-Pere, Frances Fournier (bass) Sylvain Moineau (guitar), Jean-Seastian Goyette (drums), Jean Pageau (lead vocals), flute, and Antoine Michaud (keyboards). Now, I have to admit that although this band has been around a long time, and plays in a style that is right up my alley (melodic symphonic prog), I was not familiar with this band before this album. But, after hearing several rave reviews of this new album in Prog circles (Prog Corner, Nathan on Shuffle, Prog Archives, etc.), I just had to check them out. And well, yes, this is a very good, solid album. It has all the things you expect from this style, and musically very well done. It checks all the boxes, as it has majestic anthems and themes, soaring ballads, virtuoso soloing and proggy instrumental intricacies, great vocals and harmonies, and emotinal peaks and valleys. However, it's just not something I can get very excited about, and I couldn't help but feel disappointed with it. For me, overall, it was a bit too much of the same old stuff, and just seemed somewhat generic Neo-Prog, too similar to other stuff I'd heard before. Still enjoyable, but there were no real surprises or 'Oh Wow!' moments. The melodies and themes were fine, but not stellar, and I just didn't feel the excitement or emotion of it, more like just going through the motions of creating a symphonic prog classic, perhaps succeeding, but not quite excelling. They seemed to be playing it safe, not trying anything very new or different, just sticking with what has worked for them before. It seemed to be like throwing in dozens of 80's and 90's AOR and Neo-prog albums and homogenizing them into a new album. After that first listen, I thought maybe I was being too harsh and it will grow on me after repeated listens, so I listened to it a couple more times over the next week, but still felt the same. I will say that the epic closing track, 'Is That How the Story Ends?', was great (showed more variation in sound and style, cool feel), had everything I wanted in an epic (19 min.) song and lifted the rest of the album up quite a bit. If the whole album would have been as good as that closing epic, I would have been very happy with the album, but overall, for me, I can only rank it as very good, but still somehow disappointing. Best track: Is That How the Story Ends?. Rating: 3.5 stars