PAN'TA RHEI

To my humble opinion "Pan'ta Rhei" is one of the most enjoyable records of 2005. Although the music surely is complex on some moments, this is not an album that needs a dozen of spins before satisfying the listener. Especially the excellent melodies make this album from Belgian band Ghiribizzi a must have for fans of neo- prog and prog-metal. The three keyboard members provide the album from splendid symphonic harmonies. Those terrific sounds are just part of excellent compositions like "Asian love". Even though this is the longest track to be found on "Pan'ta Rhei", the basic melody gets stuck inside your head pretty soon. I assume the reason for this is the recurring melody and the wonderful instrumentation. This epic consists of a lot of changes in mood & rhythm. The different sounding parts includes an eastern intro, an acoustic section and even a small blues part. When compared to this, the second song is more compact. "Break down soon" is based on a poppy piano part and has an appealing melody and a catchy rhythm. The trumpet adds to the diversity in the sound.

The voice of the lead singer is often the weak element in the sound of a new prog band but fortunately here it isn't. The voice has some similarities with the way Fish used to sound on the Marillion records. Max Webster the first vocalist from Kayak also comes to mind when focussing on the vocals and the dominant role of the keyboards in the compositions. This group of musicians seems extremely talented.

Despite the fact that there's a lot of keyboard sounds on "Pan'ta Rhei", the guitar riffs are omnipresent throughout the whole album. On some tracks the band tends to prog-metal. "Fires of hell", "Don't fear the unknown" and "The light" are some sort of progressive 'battle' songs like Magnum use to play during their heyday. The keyboards are sounding very eighties & the vocal harmonies are reminiscent to Queen. "The light" has a haunting atmosphere, meaty guitars on the fore, dark sounding keyboards in the background and one lovely cosmic interlude of Floydian space sounds. Here, the cosmic influence is showing from Pete Mush who released the first album of his own project "Quantum Fantay" in the spring of 2005.

An epic like ""Valley of the gold" sums up what this talented tribe of musicians is capable of. This track includes heavy guitars, some excellent moog solo's, dark sounding layers of keyboards and another marvellous cosmic excerpt. The vocals have never sounded more aggressive. The structure of this composition is very good. Its classical middle section would suit a musical quite well. Moreover the basic melody is splendid. "Time" is even better and my personal favourite due to the excellent symphonic harmonies provided by the keyboards.

You won't discover real flaws on this album. Maybe the music could use a full blown sound even though the production is pretty decent. The flying Moog solo's may sound a little outdated nowadays, as a guilty pleasure, I tend to like it ; moreover it suits the sound of the album perfect.

I don't like a ballad like "remember Paris" cause of the pathetic melody line reminiscent to Meat Loaf. On the closing track, the emotionality sounds more real and pure. The melody of this piano ballad seems more inspired. Nice one which closes the album in style.

Conclusion : Ghiribizzi has matured a lot on their second album. It can be hard to deliver a second album that tops the first one but Ghiribizzi achieved this goal. Recommended for those who like energetic prog.

This is the second album for this band from Belgium.

The highlights for me are "Asian Love" and "The Light" which are both uptempo songs with keyboards galore and some good guitar. "Valley Of Gold-Chapter I" may be the best tune though, with that dark and ominous intro followed by drums then guitar. It turns into a faster paced song. "Break Down Soon" ,"Farewell To God" and "Don't Fear The Unknown" are good songs although "Farewell to God" stands out above the other two. It features a spacey synth intro followed by piano, vocals and orchestral melodies. It gets really good after 4 1/2 minutes with some great guitar !

The down side of this record for me are the vocals, not all the time but sometimes the accent and tone is a distraction. There are four songs I don't like at all, as in "Fires of Hell" ,"Remember Paris" ,"Time" and "Better End".The sap is flowing feely on "Remember Paris" and in other places on this album.

So although there is some good symphonic prog here to enjoy, there are too many songs I want to skip each time I listened to this. I can't recommend this except to fans and collectors only.

Belgian progsters GHIRIBIZZI were found in June 2000 by singer/keyboardist Frank Centauri along with guitarist Dario Frodo and keyboardist Yves Simmah.The trio released the first GHIRIBIZZI work ''Zep tepi'' a year later as a demo-album.Soon the band was meant to be extended to a sextet with the addition of a third keyboardist, Pete Mushroom,along with Little John on bass and Gino Bartolini on drums.In March 2005 they enter the Ace Studios to proceed to the recordings of their second album ''Pan'ta rhei'',the first with the brand new line-up.In November 2005 the sophomore GHIRIBIZZI release sees the light.

STYLE: Typical product of the modern prog era.Basically this is a neo-sounding album with big symphonic leanings and a light retro feeling.GHIRIBIZZI try hard to keep well the balances between instrumental music and vocal-based parts both on the short and long tracks.Three keyboardists on the line-up,but this is far away from keyboard-led prog.Piano and synths collaborate nicely with the rhythmic and lead guitars,offering catchy arrangements filled with grandiosity and richness.Some of the tracks lean towards straight neo prog,others are more challenging with orchestrated musicianship and bombastic passages without being too excessive.Few parts of the album flirt with metal due to the heaviness of the guitars.

SOUNDS LIKE/INFLUENCES: ARENA is the most famous of the closest comparisons,especially their 00's works and could have easily been a great influence for the band.Other acts that come to mind are German CHANDELIER,co-patriots MINDGAMES and AMANDA and Dutch neighbours RICOCHET and IXION.

PLUS: The arrangements are well-crafted,perfectly executed and very balanced.Actually hardly you'll find a boring moment in here with the tracks alternating between these with catchy moments and those with a grand symphonic feeling.Guitar work is absolutely satisfying and enjoyable.The symphonic passages are of top class.The (limited) vocal lines of guitarist Dario Frodo are romantic and melodic.Production is quite clear.

MINUS: The big time vocals of this release are a question.Centauri sounds a lot like FISH,but I had a hard time getting used to his voice.Once this was done,I liked them quite a bit...Nothing new to offer the current progressive rock scene.Some programmed stuff like the harpsichord sounds coming out of the synth are not the greatest thing to listen to.

WILL APPEAL TO:..Anyone after the neo/symph sounds of our days will find plenty to like in ''Pan'ta rhei''.

CONCLUSION/RATING: ''Pan'ta rhei'' is definitely a grower and that is a good thing.The first listenings might be dissapointing,but soon you will be rewarded by the band's carefully arranged music.Insist on playing this album on your CD player.Not a lifetime listening by any means,but a great number of highly enjoyable tracks...3.5 stars.

Another new band, this time from Belgium. At first I ddin´t know what to think of their sound. For several days Pan´ta Rhei was practiclly the only CD I heard. And although it was clear from the very star that those guys were very good, the songs were strong and the musicanship of all involved awesome, something was not right. After about a week I finally found out what was that: the CD is too long (over 75 minutes) and the track order was all wrong.

Let me explain: Ghiribizzi has all the right influences and most of the time the tunes are great. There are many memorable parts on the record, but the material is rather heterogeneous. Some parts simply don´t mix well with the others. Take for exemple the opener Asian Love. It is a slow song that is too long (14 minutes) to grab the atention of the listener. The second track Break Down Soon is much more representative of their sound and, being 5 minutes long, an excellent start for the album. And that goes on for the rest of the CD. Individually they are all quite good. Together as they are, they are obstrusive between each other. It´s a hard disc to listen in full in just one sitting.

Which is a pity since their music is very interesting, creative, well arranged and very well performed. Melodic and accessible, and still very elaborate and full of surprises. They are hard to label, since they sound like no other. Frank Centauri has a very unique voice that takes some use to, but he is good. As expected, the musicians are excellent and their mix of dozens of musical styles works most of the time.

In the end I found this CD to be very good, specially if you hear the tracks individually. I guess this is an easy problem to fix and I´m willing to hear this album´s follow up. Very promising. Final rating: 3.5 stars.

Ghiribizzi is a neo prog band coming from Belgium and releasing so far in their 10 years career only three albums. This is the second release from 2005 named Pan'ta rhei and to me is by far their best album from the all three. While never gained much popularity among neo prog fans, and specialy those from Belgium or Benelux in general, Ghiribizzi offer with this econd album a pleasent and yet quite comlex in some parts neo prog music. I think this Pan'ta rhey is srepresentativ from their sound gatherd over the yers in their albums, and this oe is their peak not first and not the next release will have such great pieces like on this album. The album stars very good with nearly 15 min of top otch neo prog- Aian love is the piece, here Ghiribizzi gathered all the good ideas they had 'till that point and the result is much more then ok, even great in places. Another well performed and composed piece from the album is Valleys of gold - Chapter I (chapter II will be on their next release from 2010), another great piece, where the cherry on the cake to me is the keybord who metled very well with the guitar parts. Te voice is also ok, not a Fish clone, but has that neo prog attitude in the tone of voice, ok in the end but not fantastic. Accesible melodic neo prog with some great moments, defintly their best album eeds from my side 3 stars, more like 3.5 , the next album will not reach the full sound they had here. Good album, nothing realy groundbreaking, in MIndgame style, another belgium top neo prog band.

After 200+ neo albums over the years one feels to have heard it all in this subgenre. And I must admit when I listened to several of the tracks on here I was thinking: okay, here we go again. In worst cases I even thought Ghiribizzi was one of those bands who give neo prog a bad name. But it just shows you it's very important not to base your judgement on a few tracks but listen to the whole album.

And this is important with Pan'ta Rhei because there are 5 quarters of an hour of music on this release and the result is a pretty versatile output I have to say. I even think it's the biggest plus of this album, the varied way of composing the songs. It results in a far from boring treat of neo progressive music. The longer tracks are once more the better ones showing the bands potential best though a real stand out track is what's missing on this album.

Big question in the end is the rating once again. I feel the 4 and 2 star rating by a prog reviewer so far are both a bit overdone. On the other hand an average of 3,08 seems a bit too low everything considered. It's no coincidence all three other reviewers gave three but admitted all that it's actually 3,5. Shoot, that's a toughie. Because if I do the same, the average remains pretty low where it actually should be around 3,4 or something. In the end I will have to do what I have to do and that's giving my own rating and it will have to be 3 with the additional remark the half star possibility would have been ideal here. Sorry, Ghiribizzi.