PROMETHEUS

Wow. Fans of Anglagard, Anekdoten, Yes (Relayer and Tales era), Univers Zero, King Crimson, 20th century orchestral and chamber music, Camel or Wobbler will love this band. They use many great keyboards on the CD: Hammond B3 Organ, Mellotron 400, Moog Minimoog, Moog, Memorymoog, Sequential Circuits Prophet V and Oberheim OB- Xa. "Prometheus" required a full score to perform due to the complexity of the music! The music is VERY complex yet melodic just like Anglagard. The guitar playing is a bit more subdued than that band however. The drumming fills out the music quite nicely. The ONE song on the CD is 38 minutes long filled with many time changes and mood changes. If you are a lover of symphonic prog way more involved and complex than your average neo-prog band, this is a must have CD. They are working on a followup CD and I can't wait. Here is a link to a one minute sound clip: www.maxwellsdemon.com/mp3/head.128k.mp3

I can't tell you how impressive this piece of music is ! It's one song almost 39 minutes long called "Prometheus". This is an all instrumental work consisting of mellotron, flute, guitar, bass, drums, keyboards, organ and more. This is very complex music that is very intense. In the liner notes the band specifically thanks "ANGLAGARD for inspiring this project". And certainly that is who I thought of most of the time I listened to this amazing work as well as SINKADUS. I guess SINKADUS because of the flute and the sombre and melancholic mood that permeates the sound. A word on the name of the band which was inspired by an imaginary creature that mathematician James Maxwell created to contradict the second law of thermodynamics. Yeah, it's sort of complicated just like their music. The music doesn't have the type of melody that your going to be tapping your toes too, it's more made up of intense arrangements that change constantly and leave you saying wow ! I felt it was like enjoying a gourmet meal made up of many delicacies that were being served to me in different ways for almost 40 minutes. You know what I mean ? Hearing the same sounds being arranged differently throughout the song.

The song starts off with flute, odd metered drumming and organ. Mellotron comes in after 3 minutes.The song pretty much stops and slowly rises 4 minutes in with flute and organ. We get a full sound 5 minutes in and the drum/organ interplay is outstanding as the song begins to accellerate. 8 minutes in the song pretty much stops again as eerie and haunting flute sounds arrive.The guitar gently and slowly plays as drums come in rising to a breif full sound. Mellotron 10 minutes in and more gentle guitar. A full sound arrives before 12 minutes, then it calms down again with flute leading the way. SINKADUS comes to mind here.

The guitar sounds mournful as mellotron comes back before the tempo picks up. We get about a 5 minute section of steady drums with variations of flute, guitar and organ. Check out the mellotron 21 minutes in ! Marching style drums a minute later before more mellotron 24 minutes in. The song almost stops again 26 minutes in and rises with mellotron and a catchy drum, guitar and organ melody. 30 minutes in the song calms down as we get a spooky, haunting mellotron and flute passage. The song picks up tempo before 35 minutes with flute, organ and drums leading the way. Now it's time to take a shower ! Intense !!

I am so surprised that this record isn't more popular in prog circles.This is the definition of prog.

I didn't really enjoy this tune that much. Beside the fact it is an instrumental affair which is difficult to achieve in terms of communicating a theme and building layers of depth upon it without the aid of lyrics to direct the 38 minute single song album; it just didn't have the appeal that I was hoping it would. This isn't to say the album isn't alright, it is competent musically - has a lot of different sections and whatnot, but interesting does not a whole album make. Put aside the fact it is a one song album, it's only 38 minutes of music, short - so you'd have to expect it to grip you for every moment to really show its value. It's not really the case for me, yet. I may revisit it soon, but presently 3 stars is all I can award. Reasonable, but not essential in any way.

Maxwell's Demon is a band from USA with two albums in their pockets so far. First album from 2001 named Prometheus find the band in musical influences somewhere between King Crimson and Anglagard or Sinkadus, a well worth album but far from being something special. The album is all instrumental, a one track album clocking around 39 min and tells the story of Ayn Rand's short story "Anthem". There are lots of flute passages, that goes very well in this context and combined with mellotron and the rest is quite ok most of the time. Is quite diverse in songwritting, mellow parts, more up tempo, all is here, Craig Beebe the head of the band and the keyboard player done a good job, but I needed more memorable parts, I feel like I've heared this before here and there. Non the less a good record, that worth to be discovered and has same value and their next one released years later Diablo from 2009. 3 stars. Nice cover art.