BARBARES

I open my account for 2009 with this remarkable album by french eclectic prog band from Haute Loire - Nemo. It is also my first time I'm in contact with the music of this fascinating band. My culture about the french music is not very rich, because it's only my second french full-length album I've listened to (the first one being 1995 Mylène Farmer's Anamorphosée). Of course, I've listened to many songs and I think in opposition to many, that french language is very appropriate for rock music and for all kinds of music, too.

Barbares is the sixth studio album by the band. I regret I can't compare this one with the others, but I hope it will be soon. In french music there are really variety of melancholic feelings and that fits me perfectly. Nemo is not exception of that. They carried two tradition in their music - the first one is progressive tradition and the second one - french popular tradition. Firstly you can find everything from the classic progressive rock, but full of new dimensions and explorations on the horizon of the genre. On the other hand it is combined with classic sorrowful themes, that reminds you all the time this refined french fibre. This adds to Barbares by Nemo essence of masterful and full of suggestion project.

Barbares got beyond my expectations and I'm surely hopeful to be one of the real challengers for the album of the year of ProgArchives. The album consist of six songs (one of them - an epic, most of the others - longs songs). Very complicated music with big ideas, displayed in unshakable and spontaneous manner. The most pleasant moment is the album gets better and better with the next time you listen to it! Firstly, some of the logical connections cannot be rationalized and step by step you got into the details of the expression.

The means of expression are very much here, but probably some of the most important of them are: expressiveness (one idea is developed to its peak and the sound is dramatically full of semitones); volume of the sound (this is highly valued by me, especially the keyboards works on the album); perfect musicianship (synchronism of the instruments; it reveals the experience of the musicians to each other); the artistic manner of the songs (there are whispers and speech all around the album combined with contradictory lines of two or three different instruments).

The variety of motifs and genres is the next very important part of this album. The motifs are rationalize in the way with the others. On the other ahnd the album is full of progressive metal, jazz fusion, symphonic prog and other genres combined in perfect way. It contains extremely shifting in time signature which is the enchantment of the album.

Probably it will not be interesting for some listeners, moreover if someone don't like any of these genres, but the work worths. For me it's a masterpiece in all moments. Of course, the landmark of the album is the homonymous composition - Barbares! Exceptional, just great. If I forgot the existance of folk rock I have to mension it now. This composition contains five or six themes; some of them are developed much later, than they firstly are revealed. Other are just connecting lines between the parts. All the instruments are at their height. Great epic, that don't step off the landmark composition of progressive rock as whole. Exceptional masterpiece for serious listeners.Highly recommended for listeners of different kind of subgenres and mixtures. I have to give it 5 stars, because there isn't 6!!!