A SZAVAKON TÚL

Last week I had a listen to Tabula Smaragdina's first album in my car. I can't believe that only one review has been posted to this. Since we all are familiar with quality progressive rock coming from Hungary, I think this album deserves attention too.

With a nice, acoustic intro, the album starts with a powerful prog epic called A szavakon innen, I'd say, this has lots of Flower Kings influences, distorted bass all over and tasty keyboard work of Daniel Krivánik. This piece contains all the major themes of the album. The next track is called Winter and it has driving bass lines, mellotrons and poliphonical vocals, nive groove and surprising parts in the chorus. One of my favourites on this CD. Simple Game shows the band's affinity of writing songs, not endless themes with no connection. The chorus has some clever rythm changes and still, it's very melodical and catchy! A classical guitar solo follows with interesting technique, and later the moog and the mellotron joins the instrumentation just before the angelic female vocal appears. Thumbs up for this composition! My Electric Cat is somehow very funny and also very hard to count - the rythm changes are very clever here... too bad that the song is very short, but it reminded me of Gentle Giant and since it's a musical joke, it's nice that their kept it this way. The Passenger is the best song described as symphonic prog. I felt a small Dream Theater quotation (Take The Time) here, I think it was intentional. And the next song has also DT influences, only Another Day gets in my mind, with the soprano sax solo and the catchy melodies, but this time with tons of mellotrons. You Could Be is a rock tune with powerful guitars, minimoog in the chorus and an extensive guitar solo at the end, a good composition indeed! The last tune is Beyond Words, a laid back intro and verse and the most melodical chorus I've heard in the last few years. Multiple vocals and some quotations of the main themes from the album, which makes the listener want more to replay the album from the beginning.

I really hope that we'll hear from this band from the future, although it started as a project. After some internet browsing I found that they released some songs on different Colossus projects such as Purgatorio and Paradiso, and also they payed their tribute to the Flower Kings, by recording a song to Musea's 4CD box tribute collection.

Four solid stars from me. Recommended!