SYMPHONIC HOLOCAUST

Perfect Halloween music, whip it into the Cd player while taking the little impish monsters scavanging pitilessly for assorted unhealthy candies, spooking the entire neighbourhood in the process (this way they will remember your batmobile!). When the uninitiated first listen to prog, the most common comment is Well, gheez, it's like soundtrack to an unseen movie kind of music . Very perceptive, fella!There just might be room for a ritual conversion! Between Tangerine Dream, Goblin, Floyd, Vangelis, Trevor Rabin, Can, Wakeman and countless others, there is most definitely a cinematic coloratura to our favourite genre, especially when there is a strong symphonic inspiration. Furthermore, when featuring arguably the paragon instrument that most defines the glory years of Prog, the reverential Mellotron (you may rise!), the result can only be stupendous. Our nordic swedish friends from Anekdoten and Landberk have slapped together this seemingly one-shot tribute to the B-movie soundtracks first espoused by Goblin and produced for Dario Argento's catalogue of cultish european horror movies (Suspiria being the most noted). Monster bassist Stefan Dimle and ultra-original prog cult guitarist Reine Fiske from Landberk have joined forces with Niklas Berg and Peter Nordin of Anekdoten to release this aptly named Symphonic Holocaust ! This is a cyclonic display of the 'tron's mystical power, howling with wagnerian passion, led by a devastating bass line, doomsday drumming and effect laden guitars by both Fiske and Berg. As correctly observed and stated by my fellow PA colleagues, this isn't really all that creepy (a la Zombie) nor melodramatic ( ala Alice Cooper) but rather quite somber, melancholic and sad. Those traits happen to illicit some deep feelings within my musical soul and I just love it when the arrangements get hot and heavy. No point in a track by track breakdown, this is a prog soundtrack of the highest caliber which could easily accompany many ghoulish events besides Halloween, like riding through a storm or driving through an alpine mountain pass at night (which I both did with this album). This would be a fine companion disc to Magma's brilliantly hellish Kohntarkosz. 4.5 mellotrons