SUFFER

A continuation of Pierre Moerlen's Gong without Pierre? Well, sort of. Some former PMG members have decided to keep the show going, pretty much reminiscent of the "Expresso"-era. At times they got it right, but overall it's a mixed bag of goodies..

The album starts off with a rather aggressive and somewhat disturbing piece that displays a degree of anger. Afterwards the band settles back into more familiar territory with either touching on, or remaking an odd Gong piece. I am not convinced that it was necessary, but they do come off reasonably well.

There are some lyrical pieces thrown in here and there and it feels like the band is casting their collective nets far and wide with even the odd jazzy run, too. Of particular interest is to observe the differences between the two guitar players. Whilst Holdsworth is playing to his usual standards, Bon Lozaga is desperately trying to sound like Holdsworth, but unable to match his much more refined peer. A set of trained ears can tell the difference and I find it somewhat amusing to observe of who is playing when.

This work is quite reasonable for most parts, but neither groundbreaking, nor original. Rating it as a 4 would belittle the original PMG, whereas it would deserve more than 3 stars - if only for the effort of keeping the show going. Frustrating choice, but other than applying charity, 4 stars would be 1/4 too many.

(Well, I felt compelled to edit the rating as in hindsight this album is better than what followed later.)