PRIME SUBSTANCE

4th June 2004: Prime Substance - is the 2nd release from the Italian band Yleclipse. Symphonic prog rock, a little pinch of prog metal with a dash of delicate folk ballads with some celtic thrown in here and there,l ike on the songs"Dove Sei" with some great vocals and "Farewell Chant" which has some excellent orchestral arrangements. Half of the 8 songs are sung in English while the others sung in Italian. The singer Alessio Guerriero also does a fine job with the english vocals here. The title song "Prime Substance" has a flavoring of some Marillion a la Steve Hogarth sounds. Other highlighted songs are "Wizard" and "Radio Sahara" Over all I would recommened this cd to all. It has all the making of a descent prog recording plenty of complex time changes, frequent flavors of solo synthesizer sounds with piano overtones and some great guitar work, not to be missed. RECOMMENDED. Reviewed by John (The Progfessor) Gabbard (www.missingpiece.net)

As if according to the band's name, which is somewhat the derivative of English and Italian senses of eclipse, one half of the songs on the album are with lyrics in English (1, 2, 3, & 5), and another with those in Italian (4, 6, 7, & 8). And while the very melodious Italian language suitably fits this music, as well as most, if not all, of the kinds of music in general, Alessio Guerriero's singing in English is also very good. "Prime Substance" is an album of a completely unified stylistics, in the basis of which lies a highly original combination of both of the classic and Neo manifestations of the two classic progressive genres: Symphonic Art-Rock and Prog-Metal. Indeed, originality is one of the main hallmarks of the music of Yleclipse, and Prime Substance (1) is the only track here that contains some traces of influences - those of Marillion with Steve Hogarth. The alternation of heavy and mild arrangements is another significant aspect of this album and is typical for each of the eight songs on it. While on the whole, this music is not of a high complexity, it features a wide variety of so-called progressive ingredients, including frequent changes of a musical direction, complex time signatures, etc, and the band plays easy and tastefully throughout the album. Vocals, riffs and solos of electric guitar, passages of semi-acoustic guitar, solos of synthesizer, and those of bass and drums are present on all of the songs here, no less than the half of which though, feature also the parts of piano, Hammond, and a string ensemble. "Prime Substance" is by all means an even work, and only a couple songs here distinguish from the others by some distinctive features. Farewell Chant (3) is notable for the anthem- like vocals, and Dove sei (6), which is probably the best composition here, for great orchestral arrangements. To sum up, "Prime Substance" is certainly one of the most original Neo Prog albums that I've heard for the last two years, at least. Being both accessible and very interesting, it should be liked by thousands people from a few different Prog-lovers' circles.

This Italian band proposes a very much "Genesis" oriented music. This feeling is more obvious when lyrics are sung in English like during the good opening song "Prime Substance".

The music that you can find on this album is at times very melodic (thanks to brilliant guitar work) but can as well be average at the same time "thanks" to the vocals. It is my appreciation of "Wizard".

The more I listen to this album, the less Italian flavour I can feel about it (but the band has been moved from RPI into the neo-prog category by now): the remake of "Mercury & Sulfurus" is quite clear about this. Sub par neo-prog in all its splendour. Don't get me wrong: I like neo-prog but not the basic and tricky one like here.

Even when vocals are sung in Italian, the emotion is not really present: average at best. And instrumentation offers too little passion as far as I'm concerned. Very few very good songs are featured on this album. Just short great guitar breaks and some good synths ones. But the whole sounds pretty boring after all.

This album is a weak succession of average to weak tracks ("Levati In Volo") which can only end up on a two stars rating.