AFTERGLOW

Well, for their second release, these Norwegians actually recorded music written well prior to their debut album, supposedly in 99 (that's right, they would've waited 10 years to release these jewels). A little weird, but the album comes with minimal informations. Coming with a fantasy Bosch-like painting gatefold mini-lp with plenty of band piccies (they look like ugly meanies black metal group burning down churches disguised for a picnic) on the inner-fold, it is too bad that they didn't choose the full size mini, instead of the jewel/digipak format, because the disc is simply too tight and regular disc manipulation will eventually damage the cardboard

After a short medieval (complete with crumhorn, a wink to Gryphon, I guess) tune as form of intro, the album launches into Hybris (eeeeeehhhmmm!!!... I mean Afterglow), a 15- mins "epic" Imperial White Winter, that has everything to please the usual retro-prog fan (of which I guess I still rank among, sine I bought the album), but here I must say that Wobbler does raise my eyebrow for a few minutes, because they seem to try something else. Another not-so-short interlude that sounds like Bach's Bourée, the second epic In Taberna is programmed for another 13 minutes of pure retro-prog in the traditional sense, even though when the track nearly dies halfway through, it seemed to get a life of its own, outside the clichés, but when the string arrangements arrive less than two minutes later, you think early- ELO. The short album closes on the other medieval ditty Armoury, which supposed to give a belonging semblance to the album and book-end two epics.

I can't call this album much superior or inferior to their debut release and I wonder how much of the music was re-written or re-adapted from a decade ago. All I can say is that if you love Anglagard-derived retro-prog and are not too, regarding on originality or borrowings, you won't have a problem melting for this.