SHINGETSU LIVE 25-26 JULY 1979

This is my first exposure to the band Shingetsu, and it's a very pleasant surprise indeed. Their music is clearly in the style of mid-70's Genesis, but very unique and interesting in its own right. Since their studio cd's are hard to find, this live cd is not only fairly affordable, but sort of a nice "best of" to boot.

Sound quality? Not great. But not terrible. And these songs are generally fantastic, so you may tend to overlook the shortfalls on crisp sound engineering. The lead singer has often been compared to Peter Gabriel, but I suspect that it's for his stage antics more than his voice - he's got a great voice, but PG it ain't. Typical of other Nippon bands, the musicians are all very accomplished, and really cook on some of these songs.

This just missed my 4-star rating grade, but there's some great and different shtuff here for the curious and hungry prog lover. Another worthy find for sure; expand thy horizons. 3-1/2 stars.