THE 3RD MAJESTY

Proggers are suckers for an expert and elaborate forgery. This guitarless, keyboard-led power trio from Norway have just the thing to slot between your Le Orme and Triumvirat albums. They did it - they got the drum micing and the tape saturation just right. I think if somebody had handed me a beat up record cover with ring wear I could have been completely convinced this was a period product of 1973. The lyrics are the weak link, unconvincingly cosmic in a way that sounds spoofish. Luckily, the musical backing isn't throwaway music. The writing is good, harmonically creative if not original. There's no Mellotron, but plenty of Hammond, Clavinet, Wurly piano and judiciously applied mono synths. Add a refreshingly flexible drummer who sounds like he hasn't heard any Rush and a bassist who makes a bold sound that isn't always growly picked Rick. This, the A-side epic, is a great ride. I especially think they captured some magic in the quiet parts.

The 3rd Majesty is just Emerson, Lake, and Palmer musical fanfiction. In a lot of ways, you have to respect the craft. The production is spot on, the drumming style is very familiar, and the organ and synth tones are one and the same. The riff writing is dead on, especially knowing that ELP was informed by the vast array of heavy psych/progressive blues rock bands that existed in the early prog scene. The vocal melodies are really meh, usually evoking something like tarkus. Speaking of, if you ever wanted to hear Tarkus again but with less pomp, try the title track.

Distant Sphere is the only song on this album that does anything remotely original or experimental. It has a lot of sections that are so angular that it feels like it verges on avant-prog. Maybe because ELP didn't use electric piano, they finally found an instrument they could have original sounding ideas on. To some extent, rather, because as the most "modern" sounding song, this goes no later than the late 70s. The opening is peak "classical music aesthetique", something I'm not a fan of.

I view this band on the same tier as Greta Van Fleet. I get that the retro prog niche is one that will fill this band's shows and streaming catalog with nostalgic old prog fans for however long we stick around with them. But I don't get it, the sacrifice of your own identity to push something out under the constraints of 1971 with half the imagination. There's long strands of blues riffs and vaguely jazzy chords being hammered out on the organ while the drums follow and change time signatures just enough to render this undanceable, but not enough to compete with the fact that a time signature is not a groove.

Ultimately, this album doesn't really do anything, and that was the nail in the coffin for me. What makes Emerson Lake and Palmer interesting is the songwriting and interplay between each of the members, as well as the distinct voice and delivery of Greg Lake. Ring Van Mobius copies the worst aspects of Emerson Lake and Palmer. Mind you, this isn't bad music. It's just trying to do something that's been long played out. If you're a symphonic prog completionist, or just a fan of well recorded hammond organ, this is for you.

This Norwegian act fits in well in the corpus of retro-prog bands currently popular. Rather than aping Yes or Genesis, though, they've gone closer to the route of ELP or very early Deep Purple. This trio lacks a guitarist, so keys are at the forefront. Unlike many retro-prog bands, RVM manages to nail to keyboard tones of the early 1970s, which gives the music an authentic feel and goes a long way in making this album that much more enjoyable. The organ has some nice grit to it, and the synth leads channel Tarkus better than any other modern band. The songs themselves keep things changing and shifting, and solos feel purposeful.

Review originally posted here: theeliteextremophile.com/2020/11/16/odds-ends-november-16-2020/