SHOWING PACES

Anyone can spot Genesis as their primary musical root. Ageness -- Genesis; even names sound similar, don't they? On one hand, the theatrics of Peter Gabriel's Genesis (though his terribly pretentious vocals may try to copy more early FISH than Gabriel), and on the other, the 'Proto-Neo' sound of post-Gabriel Genesis, especially Duke (1980).

Here and there are nice melodies and the playing is not bad at all, but something is missing - originality?! - and the album leaves an unsatisfied taste. Hardly any track hits its target perfectly. It's many years ago I listened to this album, so I can't talk about songs in deeper detail. But as a positive side, Ageness' later albums are clearly more mature than this. (These are words from my original review, I just removed some thoughts that were more or less false. Apparently it was written too many years after listening to the album!)

EDITED IN 2010: Ouch, how cruel have I been with this album. I judged them as mere copycats without originality, but now after returning to the albums of AGENESS this sounds pretty pleasant Neo-Prog effort. OK, the Genesis references are still very strong, but so what. Many tracks are very good really. Compared to the Imageness album, tracks are shorter and there is no long epic, but still this debut is pure Prog. Mostly keyboard-driven in Tony Banks -style, and also the bass sounds very much like Mike Rutherford's in the trio era of Genesis. Tommy Eriksson's vocals may irritate at first, so obviously he is influenced by Fish especially, but, well, it fits nicely in this Neo-Prog environment. All in all, one shouldn't judge them for their direct influences but just enjoy the music.