DECADENCE

Decadence is a russian prog metal band with symphonic elements added here and there. They released only one album in october 1999 named Dreams of Nekton. First time I've listen to this album I was a little confused about their music, not realy 100 % prog metal, not really symphonic prog, a mixed bag of this subgenres of prog music with some jazz elemets added here and there. After some spins the album begun to grow on me, and after 5-6 listings in a row , I find it excellent. The musicianship is great, some of the passages are awesome, the duel between the guita and keys on some pieces is brilliant, like on :Dream 1: Saga of Cadavers, great piece, and Dream 4 : Fairytales of Stars - two piece clocking over 10 minutes with brilliant musichianship showing that even in countries with no prog history behind, from time to time are bands that worth to be discovered. The rest of the pieces are also very good. Great ideas, tigh compositions, and on top of that the voice of female Julia Vikman is very good. She can shift from mellow passages to more harder one's always excellent. The lyrics are in russian language but fits very well to the atmospher of the album. Anyway the music they play here is a some prog metal a la Dream Theater, some symphonic elemets, some Rush twists here and there, but the resoult is a great and very underrated album. They didn't make it on market, is was kinda clear because is from an easter country - Russia, and not many from newer generations coud make it big in prog music, so they after this reales no heared about them . The album was found an released on Musea records. So if you want a combination of prog metal with symphonic arrangemets and aswell want to discover un annoticed band from Russia try this one, you will not be diseppointed for sure. I was very impressed finaly after 6 spins, great album who desearve a better view. 4 stars for sure, and excellent addition to any collection. Album available or it was fiew years ago on Musea.

Up 'til now I had only heard one progressive band from Russia: AZAZELLO. With the release of DECADENCE's debut album there's two bands. AZAZELLO though are playing Prog Metal while DECADENCE is closer to traditional Progressive & Symphonic Rock. It's nice to hear that DECADENCE is equally good as AZAZELLO too. The lyrics and the female vocals are performed in the Russian language. The lyrics are translated into English in the CD-booklet, so you can understand what they're all about.

The compositions and the musicians are excellent: there's plenty of good melodies, professional arrangements, tempo & mood changes and extended instrumental passages. The music is a mix between A PIEDI NUDI, DREAM THEATER, KING CRIMSON, RUSH and YES. It's a rather varied album though and it's hard to point out any specific influences.

My only criticism would be that the production isn't very good, which makes it sounds like a low-budget project. But despite that, this is a recommended album if you want to experience what's going on in the world of Progressive Rock in Russia today.