BLACK AND WHITE

Former Galahad bass player Lee Abraham is already in business solo for quite some time now but with his latest he has managed to produce something special. Not aware of his earlier material I'm contemplating to explore that as well...

Starting with the intro track Speaking of Which Lee put us on the wrong foot one might say. Sounding symphonic and rather tame it suddenly turns really rough with first real song Face the Crowd. This proves we could put mr.Abaraham in the heavy prog subgenre just as well. On the other hand the music sounds pretty accessible which warrants the crossover choice very much in fact. After several minutes the song calms down and the acoustic guitar shows us we're dealing with more than one style for sure, even within one song. After a few seconds the song explodes again to return in the original fashion. Next up is The Mirror, by far my favorite track and one that has managed to climb up my personal all time stand outs. So that indicates Abraham is obviously pretty much my cup of tea. And it's remarkable this third track is the clear winner knowing I'm an epic devotee and the last two tracks are two very long songs and also very good epics which means The Mirror has to be truly outstanding to beat those two. And so it is. It's a very good composition and has a great build up saving the best for last with a blistering guitar solo blowing my mind completely. I hope he will make more of these in the future.

The accompaning band of Lee Abraham features prog heroes like Gary Chandler (Jadis), John Mitchell (Arena, Frost* a.o.) Steve Thorne and Sean Filkins (Big Big Train a.o.) and fourth track Celebtrity Status is well lifted by Gary thanks to his great singing skills. The mentioned two epics finish the album off in superb style simply bringing me to one possible conclusion: Black and White is a great album, truly excellent in my book without doubt. The only slight warning I can think of is towards those who can only embrace the real progressive artists and albums. Lee Abraham is only semi-prog and therefore rightly placed in the crossover genre. This album is a mix of neo prog and heavy prog mostly and thus recommended to fans of those subgenres. Four stars is my verdict.

Lee Abraham is a british progressive rock multi instrumentalist with a respectable solo career for little more then 15 years, but aswell he was part in Galahad line-up 4 years (2005-2009) on bass duties and backing vocals. Being fan of Dream Theater and Spock's Beard he embraced progressive rock/metal genre.

His solo career begun in 2002 with releasing his first album in 2003 Pictures in the hall, well recived by all prog circles. View from the bridge is the second offer (guest appearances apear Karl Groom and famous keyboard player Martin Orford) and is my fav album from his catalogue so far.

Third album saw the light in 2009 named simple Black and white. Well, this is a worthy album for sure, neo prog combined with some heavier sections closer to prog metal, it's obvious this direction because the engineer and mastering is no one else then Karl Groom (the guitar player from progressive metal band Threshold and a respected long time neo prog fan and composer of this genre).

A nice combination of neo prog with some prog metal elements thrown in in places specially on pieces like Face the crowd or Black. There are lots of instrumental sections well played, well composed, with very nice guitar parts, my fav being for sure Black, a 14 min pure dellight, the duelings between keyboards and guitars are exemplary. Lots of well known musicians help Abraham on this one, the omni present Gerald Mulligan on drums from Credo fame (another overlooked neo prog band) who will be present on every Lee Abraham solo album from now on, Dean Baker on keyboards from Galahad, Gary Chandler on vocals from Jadis, John Mitchell on guitar from Jadis and Arena and more top notch musicians involved and of course Lee Abraham responsable for bass, guitar parts and keyboards.

All in all a very strong album, I like all albums he release across the years and this one is no diffrent, Black and white desearve attention, Lee Abraham is a gifted musicians always done a good job on every album. 3.5 stars for sure.