INERTIA

Inertia is the initial effort by Dutch duo Taurus & Pisces, and while it's a rather underwhelming production it's not an album without promise.

Straightforward compositions with a distinct mainstream orientation in terms of structure is what's offered, with many and dominating vocal passages, steady and more or less unchanged rhythmical backbone where the main alterations are in terms of intensity and choice of arrangements. Undistorted electric and acoustic guitars and various forms of synth textures provides the musical motifs, where the addition and subtraction of sounds and instruments adds variation. Symphonic inspired backdrops is a distinct feature throughout, and careful use of electric guitar for riffs and soloing does add some extra substance.

A loud, compact and often compressed sounding mix tends to overshadow the melodies themselves though, and the instruments at times seems to cancel themselves out rather than filling out the soundscape. And when the tracks themselves are rather unadventurous, this disc never really managed to engage me. Those who might fancy a slice of what I'd describe as symphonic progressive pop might find this effort to be of interest though.

A two man project from Holland..... What does this reminds me about ? Their fellow countrymen US, that is.

And there are some similarities here, yes. The sound is not that similar. But where US expands into symphonic and neo prog; Taurus And Pisces is much more mainstream rock orientated. More song orientated, that is. That with some prelude and interlude sounding pieces of music as the exception from this rule. But most songs are pretty mainstream.

The problem with this approach is that the songs has to be good to really make an impact. If they are not good, the album falls flat on it's face. Like this album.

The sound is good. It is based on guitars, tangents, bass and drums. The vocals is good. But the songs are pretty bad, to be brutally honest. Yes, this album is the end product of some hard, very hard craft and a lot of love (to the music). But the songs and this album is simply anonymous. I hate to do reviews like this, but that is the truth. Sorry.

2 stars

A small decade ago Gert Bruins and Peter Everts decided to found a neoprogressive or if you wish a crossover project but managed to come up with an album 5 years later which appears to be their only one so far. And to say that it's a demanding effort from which one should have to take a long break to recover, I honestly don't think so.

For two of my collegue reviewers it was even so mediocre that they felt it was forth just a couple of stars but I don't agree with this either. As this is simply a pretty good disc with not many flaws or disappointments. The only real critical remark I can think of is that it's not very uplifting or mindblowing compared to the greater bands on our site. And yes, it's just borderline prog probably too. Not much depth or profundity to be found here, true.

But does this make Inertia a poor or weak album ? I don't think so. The execution of both instrumental sections and vocals are good enough I feel. The compositions are average/good and the production is ok as well. So I will not go as far as rounding down to two stars, rather round up to three is most adequate I believe. Inertia is not highly recommended but nothing to stay away from either.