ISOPODA

This album from this Belgian band comes across as a blend of IQ, Strawbs and Genesis. Not many miles away from Manning, in fact. The music is melodic and subtle. Sometimes, it is pastorial. The musicians knows what they are doing. The vocals are good and clearly in the Strawbs vein. The music is keyboards based, although they are used sparingly. The same can be said about the guitars. In other words; the Genesis formula. The problem is that there is only one really good song on this album. I am referring to The Muse which is a great song. The rest is pretty average. On the other hand; there is no bad songs either. The album flows and ebbs away during the three quarters of an hour it last. I really do not have any strong opinions about this album. It is good and pleasing to my ears and that's it. I doubt it will be a regular feature in my CD player or if I would ever play it again. Ten times for the purpose of this review and I have got my fill.

3 stars

But the problem here is there a sense of waiting for the thing to take off, or for some gem to emerge, or for a real connection with the music to occur. But that doesn’t ever happen. The more I think about it the more this seems like the same kind of feeling I get from listening to most neo-progressive music: technical excellence, emotional void.

One problem of course is this thing came out at least 3-4 years too late. Real symphonic prog was in serious decline by 1978, and the emergence of pseudo art-rock/MTV cheese was just ramping up. These guys fell into the middle, both in terms of chronology and musically. Their music is clearly influenced by Genesis, Yes, Camel and the like, but the vocals and some of the arrangements seem to fall into the ‘neo’ category. This is especially true of “The Muse” and “Considering”. I’m not sure if this is because the band was trying to stick to their progressive roots while still putting out a commercially viable record, or if they really didn’t have strong roots to begin with. And on that note, I really don’t consider these guys to be symphonic – instrumentally they are far closer to what was often called Art Rock back then, but with some Genesis influences here and there. And except for the narration, “Don't Do It The Easy Way” kind of reminds me of some more mellow The Tangent tracks.

This is really about as close to a non-descript, generic progressive rock album as I’ve heard in a long time. I can’t find anything to say bad about it, or good for that matter. If you were looking for a prog-sounding soundtrack as background music for a play or movie but you didn’t want the music to be recognizable like Floyd or Genesis or something, this would be a great choice. As such I guess it is a three star album, but just barely. Mildly recommended, but not by much.

peace

"Taking Root" actually takes off pretty well at the time the self-named song thunders in your speakers, experimenting particular odd sounds out of an organ and some keyboards with crunchy guitar interludes, sporadically showing this guys can surely rock. But with excitement comes disappointment. In a sudden turn of fate, the song turns cheesy and empty, lead vocalist Dirk De SCHEPPER explores the sassy lyrics he indisputably wrote with a creepy almost snoozing pitch sound of voice, and, as the album moves forward, the instruments are displayed so outrageously that it makes you wanna turn the stereo off. Like it happened to me, I just couldn't listen to the whole atrocity in one single sit.

So, if your bag is enjoying clattery noises out of arbitrarily played cymbals, rackety tambourines, laser gun sounds, despiteful experiences that resemble hideous imitations at the pure style of "Studio 54" and Jerry Lee LEWIS, song 7 on the track listing, "The Fall"; and what the hell, the rest of the album as well, ISOPODA is the kind of pseudo-prog rock band for you.