ERSATZ

I've got to say that I havn't been that much fascinated by the quite half-baked mélange between grunge and prog on the debut of this French trio, ehem quartet. Actually by the time of release of their second (and unfortunately last) album here called "Ersatz" (German word for substitute) the band had been left already as a trio and been dissolved since drummer Didier Pégeron being only 26 years old had been sadly died due to a car accident. So this one is in fact a tribute album to him and has been only released for this reason. And what an excellent tribute, there's actually no way of comparison to their debut, it's miles away in terms of style coherence and quality. I use to have both of their CD's in my collection since a few years and though this one here was immediately highly appealing to me I never found really the time (too many other records) to listen carefully enough to it for writing a review. So now, years later I was thinking it's definitely time to give more attention to this great work, grabbed it from my shelf finally and since a couple of days it's almost not leaving my player anymore.

Being almost all instrumental (apart from the song "La Blonde" with pleasant vocals by guest Elsa Klajnberg) this highly versatile record is anything than a boring or easy listen but rather a very interesting and enjoyable one for lots of spins. Its versatility in fact is that high that it really offers something for any preferred taste be it heavy, dark, symphonic, melancholic, highly complex or acoustic. Certainly the kind of style 4/3 de Trio is playing here might be called derivative and not really groundbreaking and just for this reason alone I wouldn't call this one necessarily a masterpiece of progressive music. One can hear clear influences by Crimson, Anekdoten and Anglagard (mainly in the guitar work which is really outstanding) and at times their country fellow band Taal is coming to one's mind, especially in the great fully orchestrated opener "Solmhinärm". The title track continues more in a heavy rocking vein being a jazzy/classical mélange in the vein of Crimson or Anglagard with excellent e-piano. "Bleu Cerise" starts quite strange and rather improvised, here the band enters Avant-Prog territory but the track actually develops very dynamically offering highly impressing guitar play and a playful brassy middle section in free-jazz manner. "Ayahusca" spreads a great 70's feeling with majestic organ sound and some excellent solo presentations on guitar and synths. The acoustic and classically sounding "Oceane" offers a nice more quiet rest and it's the place where Guillaume Fenoy can fully show his high skills on guitar. The 16++ min long-player "Kossmokardak" could be considered the definite highlight of this disk although this is hard to say when speaking about such a strong album full of highlights. This is absolutely heavy and complex progressive rock between Red-phase Crimson and Rush to give just a rough idea. The final more mellow "La Blonde" is a perfect closure for this great album where Sébastien Gramond presents once again all kind of analogue keyboard sounds. The two bonus tracks are obviously solo works by sadly passed away drummer Didier Pégeron on electric guitar accompanied by sampled bass and drums. Really heavy rocking but nonetheless intricate stuff every metal fan will highly appreciate!

Finally the only thing left for me saying is that I'd highly recommend this album to any Prog fan looking for extraordinary music. Maybe not a masterpiece by definition but 4 ½ STARS REALLY!