ESCAPING FROM THE HANDS OF GOD

Escaping from the Hands of God is absolutely essential to any fan of Neo-Prog. Furthermore, a fan of Symphonic Prog or Prog-Metal would do well to scout out a copy. It's very appealing, and versatile. I find it a bit hard to sum up Escaping from the Hands of God because most of the tracks are fairly lengthy and so much is happening musically within the songs. There are endless moods encompassed in the album, varying from joyous to brooding and contemplative and Saens can switch seamlessly from these polar opposites.

Escaping from the Hands of God showcases Saens' plethora of musical styles and influences, ranging from jazz and Arabic to choral and Gothic. They do an amazing job of molding these varied influences into their overall sound and, more importantly, they know when to emphasize each influence, thus avoiding a nasty mixing of vastly different styles. But these influences never overshadow Saens' dominant Neo-Prog sound, which is always present.

The music is often dramatic and never sparse; there are layers upon layers of vocal arrangements, keyboard work, independent bass melodies and guitar melodies. The good thing is that all of this is never overwhelming, it just demands attention. All of the songs deserve every second of their length and the level of musicianship and creative songwriting is unfathomable. And not the kind of "play as fast as you can until your fingers bleed" kind of musicianship, but rather the "play the right notes at the right time" kind of musicianship.

It would be hard to go into the individual tracks mainly because there is so much going on in each song that it would take me far over 1500 words to do the music justice, and few people really want to read all of that. After hearing only Escaping from the Hands of God, I hold Saens to be one of the best Neo-Prog bands of the past decade and beyond. Try with all your might to get a hold of Escaping from the Hands of God!