SERPENTS IN CAMOUFLAGE

Ahaha. So, you know how people like to diss early Marillion and claim it just sounds like simplified Gabriel-era Genesis? (They're wrong when they say that by the way - Marillion's early sound was a much more interesting blend than that.) Well, take all of those blithe dismissals and apply them to Citizen Cain, because at least as far as this album goes they are entirely true.

In particular, lead vocalist Cyrus' vocal style is so close to Peter Gabriel's in his more flouncey and dramatic theatrical moments in Genesis that it just plain has to be a deliberate imitation - but Cyrus overplays Gabriels' vocal habits so much that it crosses the line into parody. Furthermore, for a lot of the album his vocal delivery isn't nearly as varied as Gabriel's - whereas Gabriel could adopt a sweet, gentle tone at times, Cyrus is locked into the "pretentious proclamation" voice more or less permanently with only a few digressions.

The end result is that I tend to feel that Cyrus is the major stumbling block in Citizen Cain's sound on this debut album - more irritating even than the cheap drum machine they were obligated to use in the recording sessions - which is rather embarrassing for the band given that he's the driving force behind it, being the sole member of the 1980s lineup remaining to take up the mantle here.

Over time I've come to realise that Stewart Bell and Frank Kennedy's musical backing here is something of a saving grace of the album, especially when it comes to Bell, whose mimicry of Mark Kelly and Tony Banks ends up in a slightly more characterful and interesting mix than Cyrus' one-dimensional ripping off of Peter Gabriel. Frank Kennedy is likewise reasonable enough on guitar. It can take a bit to really appreciate their work, however, because the band's compositional chops just aren't there yet and the mix on the album is just a little off, and because Bell is cursed with some rather cheap equipment which sounds cheesy and dated at points.

Something of a problem arises with Citizen Cain's compositional approach; they're playing here a mix of more straight-ahead neo-prog and more complex symphonic material, and they're actually much better on the simpler sections mostly because they aren't tripping over themselves during them. In the more complex parts they seem to lash sections of music together by blending the crescendos of Genesis songs into a paste and showboating constantly, not realising that it the buildup to such crescendos was an absolutely vital part of the original compositions which can't be dispensed with lightly.

On the whole, Citizen Cain come across like major league Genesis fans who wanted to produce a neo-proggy update of their favourite band, but didn't quite understand how Genesis put their songs together and what influences shaped them, so they end up mimicing the most obvious and distinctive quirks of the Genesis style without any deeper appreciation or mastery of the underpinnings of the great ones' craft.

In other words, Citizen Cain is cargo cult Genesis. Their saving grace is that they're clearly quite good at the whole clone game - good enough to make this album an entertaining listen if you can set aside the somewhat shaky production values, and you don't expect anything other than what Gabriel-era Genesis and Fish-era Marillion already delivered in spades on their original albums.