AMENOPHIS

It always brings me joy to discover great prog from the eighties, I guess because it doesn't happen very often. AMENOPHIS are from Germany and they released two albums in their careers.The band I was reminded of when listening to this album was GENESIS, and that would mainly be because of the guitarist. This guy can really play some amazing melodies, especially with the acoustic guitar. Actually the last five bonus songs are all fairly short instrumentals, primarily made up of some tasteful, beautiful and intricate acoustic guitar melodies. Nice. His brother is the drummer, while the bass player's talented sister (an artist) actually designed the surreal cover art. This record though is guitar driven all the way.

"Suntower" is so well done, the keyboards and the relaxed guitar solos.This is all so melodic, but the song ends quite aggressively with keys and guitar leading the way. "The Flower" is my favourite song. We hear vocals for the first time in this beautiful and delicate song. Guitar comes in at 2 minutes and it's fantastic ! This is a GENESIS moment for me as the tempo changes continue in this song. Some great energetic guitar solos after 6 minutes.

"Venus" has a spacey intro as vocals come in. Guitar and drums play on as some in your face bass arrives 5 minutes in with keyboards following. "The Last Requiem" is my second favourite. For the record i'd swear there was flute on these last two songs. Anyway the guitar in the intro is really good and the drums and bass lead the way until a scorching guitar solo comes in. It's almost 4 minutes in before we hear vocals.

A couple of years ago Greg Walker sent me his "work in progress" list of what he feels are the all time greatest prog records (one per band) ever recorded. It's a 3 page list and this record is included, now I know why. 4 bright stars.