VOCANDA

The best of trilogy telling different adventures of Sunders brothers (the other two being "Interdead" telling story of Adrian and "Numbers" telling story of Johnny). The concept album is the story of Daniel, young and hollow lawyer, who has a car accident, goes to the hospital and while uncouscious, has visions. Yes, the concept is familiar, but Millenium utilized this concept before Ayreon's "The Human Equation". However, Arjen Lucassen has had an army of singers and prolific musicians, whereas Millenium had to do with just rock ensemble, female singers and occasionally sax or harpsichord. And thez did the best with this gear. The concept is a bit different than Ayreon's, instead of telling various stage of his life to creatures like Fear or Love, Daniel goes to hell, and then to purgatory and undergoes some kind of trial (lawyer's worst nightmare) of his life. The evidence shows his greediness (Lady Cash Cash) and lack of feelings towards second person (For The Price Of Her Sad Days, lyrical, yet not properly developed track), but he goes out free delivering sappy speach (I Would Like To Say Something). The best track IMHO is "Waltz Vocanda", showing the most important judge, Oracle. The album is conceived as a kind of rock opera, however, the Millenium lacked the voices, and they are not maestros in the vein of Gabriel with Collins. The tunes are nice, yet obvious, and so are the keyboards and guitar solos. They did their best at the time, so it deserves 4 stars IMO. Decent neo prog.

This is the first album I've heard by Millenium, who have carved out a place for themselves in the front rank of the Polish neo-prog scene. Like their predecessors on that scene such as Collage, the influence of Marillion (and, to a lesser extent, Pendragon) is a big factor in the music, and like many bands they also draw a lot on late-period Pink Floyd motifs to add a slightly different spin to proceedings.

The concept of the album - a cynical lawyer gets in a car crash and enters a coma, during which he has visions of himself on trial to assess whether he's wasted his life - is interesting enough, and the musical backing is decently executed, so on the whole this seems to be a very good place to start exploring this band's music. At the same time, I find it rather wearing at times - for example, the refrain on The Price of Her Sad Days is overused and gets incredibly irritating over the course of the song, and that's hardly the only piece which gets repetitive and outstays its welcome.