WAITING IN THE SPIDER'S WEB

Wow ! These days I'm listening to tons of new prog stuff and I can say that quality is highly different from one record to another. But... this one... is probably the most terrible effort I heard since a while. The music is regular neo-prog stuff, slow one, without nothing new or catchy, honourable guitar playing. But.. the singer is just terrible. He's just not able to sing in english at all, I think that the only ones who have an even worse accent are arab and french people (I'm french !). Moreover the singing is all but mastered and often funny. Add the incredibly ridiculous Marillion-like album title, and you get the typical neo-prog amateur production that nobody wants to listen at more than 5 minutes.

A complete neo prog obscurity,Crystal Maze was an idea of Austrian bassist/singer Ferry Bullinger (ex-Indigo),who found the band in the 80's in Stuttgart.The original band included also guitarist Christoph Arndt,drummer Thomas Schmid and keyboardist Peter Schaub,who left in 1987 to be replaced by Heinz Wallenfels.Their first album ''Waiting in the Spider's Web'' contains material written between 1985 and 1987.

A typical Neo Prog release of the 80's,the album contains non-risky melodic Progressive Rock with lots of catchy moments and some tracks closer to Hard Rock and AOR to satisfy an even wider audience.In the vein of other obscure German Neo Prog acts like ZIFF,BEL AIR or ZENOBIA,most of the tracks present heavy MARILLION and TWELFTH NIGHT hints with sensational guitar solos,dreamy keyboard work with a few symphonic twists,while the whole album is based on its emotional atmosphere and the trully ethereal melodies.Vocals are a little accented,but they do work well despite the obvious lack of vocal range.Actually the first half of the album is really great and desreves to be listed as Progressive Rock with some top notch melodies here and there,the second being unfortunately more flat with more straight-rock moments of little interest,like the long but boring instrumental ''Prejudice''.

An unknown and rare German work even around the time of its release in progressive music darkest hours,''Waiting in the Spider's Web'' will please any fan of decent and accesible Neo Progressive music and will hold your interest for some time due to its highly melodic content.Recommended.