KAIPA

I´ve always had high hopes for Kaipa - they come from very fruitful prog music country- Sweden, there is undoubtedly high level of musicianship in the band and the Progarchives community has given this album a fairly high rating of 3.45. This purchase can´t go wrong you might think? Well, not exactly.

First of all, the album just sounds like most of the songs are written without a direction in mind. Many sections in different tracks repeat each other which makes them sound too much alike. Vocal melodies aren´t excactly helping either, because there is very little real creativity and a lot of rambling movements, which, in time, just gets annoying. In fact, sad to say, but female vocals on this record sometimes get downright disturbing, because of their high-pitched sound that tends to pierce the instrumentals. Oh, and not to mention the esthetics - I can´t decide which one is sillier - the name of the album or its cover? Solitary Pathway is probably the weakest song of the album, because the sense of 80´s pop music riffs (not in a good, Frank Zappa style) makes it sound nothing but cheesy.

There were a few enjoyable moments though. I really liked most of the instrumental solos, for example in Liquid Holes in the Sky and Path of Humbleness. The creativity of drumming and synth harmonies on this record are absolutely remarkable. Nevertheless, in my mind Angling Feelings is a weaker album than Mindrevolutions and In The Wake of Evolutions.

Just found myself thinking - if I could get only the instrumental edit of this record, I´d probably give it 3,5 stars.

I had/have very mixed feelings about the first post Roine Stolt album Angling Feelings. Although Kaipa is still continuing the same style, my mixed feelings has now evaporated.

I am by no means an expert on Kaipa although my collection include most of their albums. I have to admit that Kaipa has been put on a back-burner for a while. In fact, too long. I need to change that. But I also believe I wrote this too in my Angling Feelings review two years ago so I am not exactly a man for my words. Anyway..........

Kaipa is to me a Swedish band with roots in the Swedish folk rock style. Roots which started to grow to a decent cedar tree after Roine Stolt's exit. The rest of their sound is the typical 1970s symphonic prog with emphasis on Genesis and Yes. Add some RPI too and you get their sound.

The music is both epic and very melodic. It is full of small details which makes this album a real joy to behold. In other words, the quality is great throughout. My two only gripes is that there is no real killer tracks here and the songs is a bit too sugar sweet to my liking. But this album gives me the feelings of a typical sunny summer's day on the farmlands in Sweden. And that is a good thing.

This album is a great album with no great weaknesses and a sunny flavour. I really likes it and I should now give this band a lot more respect. Kaipa is really among the five best prog rock bands from Europe at the moment and this album really proves my point.

4 stars !!!!

Certainly- I recognize it- They are talented musicians, as for their experience (especially regarding the long career which has characterized the role of Roine Stolte within his recent groups- such as Transatlantic, Flower Kings and of course the present Kaipa), but I'm a little bit disturbed when the typical sound of the seventies begins to "flow" in their compositions!!... Ok- by considering this album "In The Wake..." another product of classic prog- the choice made by Kaipa is always coherent, even though at the end their artistic value is poor, being too much "derivative" in my opinion, regarding the old style of the band (perhaps it could have been ok thirty years ago!!...).

Instead when They insert simple and convincing melodies into the mini-suites, inside a "wall" of mellotron sound, by driving the listener to the folk music genre, the output is a little bit different. Otherwise, despite of finding some embarassing lyrics inside, you can appreciate a good example of interplay between the guitar and the keyboards, above all in the track "Arcs Of Sound" or within the title-track , but I don't know whether it's enough to recommend the present work or less.

You can check it out at least, but for instance a clever band from the USA- like Echolyn- had traced a path to be emulated in the 1st half of the nineties in their gem "Suffocating the Bloom"- and it could have been a new way in order to perform an excellent modern symphonic prog; instead Kaipa has never followed such example... in fact the present album- that creates some echoes of an old and dated music genre- also in the title (do you remember that famous album by King Crimson in the early seventies?...)- is sometimes interesting anyway, even though being never able to make a renewal of the so called progressive genre (think also of Frank Zappa or After Crying within "6"!!).

After all it's better than their previous albums, but neither exceptional nor original at all...so make your own choice, as usual!!

When it comes to stale symphonic bombast, In The Wake Of Evolution easily surpasses all competition. First of all there's the in your face Yes plagiarism. Mimicking another band is not wrong as such, but unluckily Kaipa doesn't capture the creative genius of Yes at all. This is a gaudy Yes make-over that sounds more like Tormato then like any other album. The synths are loud and tasteless, the guitar lines overwrought, the solos pointless, the melodies cliché and so on. In short, everything that can go wrong with a symphonic album does go wrong here.

If the hollow Yes style-exercises won't warn you off, the plenty AOR influences on this album sure might. In the Heart of her own Magic Field for instance is flat commercial FM-rock. The folk commonplace added on top won't help. And on it goes for a full 70 grating minutes in total. Only the closing track has an anthemic chorus that kind of works, even if it's as old as the hills.

This music sounds completely fake to me, while wearing the glitter cloak of prog, there is not one minute on this album that is blessed with the true spirit of progressive rock: there is no heart in this music, no personality, no creativity, no artistic vision, no decent compositions and no emotion.

In The Wake Of Evolution is a flashy pastiche of symphonic prog that offers striking arguments for all prog bashers to claim prog as the worst and most tasteless music ever made. Who can blame them when hearing this album. It's a shame really, prog produced and continues to produce some of the most stellar music ever. Kaipa however is catered for sympho die-hards only; the remainder of the world has no need for this album at all. Formulaic and forgettable.

After a long period without reviewing albums and even longer period without giving 5 stars rating, I return with a review about this brilliant symphonic album by swedish veterans from Kaipa. And it's not accidentally, but naturally! In my opinion, the best album of 2010 so far! It's what I dream of all the time when I pronounce the words symphonic rock. Exceptionally balanced album without weak (or even just good) moments. It's full of surprises and emotional parts as well as great guitar solos, saturated sound, and original development of the ideas. Probably the most important moment of the album are the complicated and reasonable structure of the musical themes and their combination with the vocal parts. The combination of male and female vocals is just divine. Impressive performance and quality of the vocals, which's not typical for most of progressive rock music. All the instruments perform remarkably. There're no weak components all around the album. As a general conclusion I would say - perfect combination of songwriting and musicianship. All these superlatives raise In the Wake of Evolution to the heights of modern progressive rock culture!

Once again, Kaipa has created a beautiful album of symphonic prog. This one has a strong Yes influence. The song structures are slightly reminiscent of the famed group, but it's the lyrics and vocals, that bring Yes to mind mostly (and I assume dropping Yes titles and keywords into the lyrics was not an accident). I don't count that against them. There should be more bands in this world that strive to sound like Yes.

Vocalists Patrik Lundström and Aleena Gibson have learned to mesh their voices together much better, creating soaring harmonies (a talent they will perfect on the next album). And Jonas Reingold and Morgan Ågren once again provide a powerful rhythm section.