LIMITS

Fairly standard Neo-Prog is what we find in this debut album by the spanish Dracma. The band which this sounds most similar to is early IQ, with other usual Neo references like Fish-era Marillion, Pendragon and occasionally Pink Floyd or Camel.

The backbone of the music is the good keyboards of Jordi Amela with the typical interplays with a good enough guitar and a nice upfront bass. Incidentaly the album credits in PA as of today are wrong mentioning guitarist Jordi Prats as bassist and ommiting the actual bassist Jordi Planas (yes Jordi is a popular name in Catalunya). Unfortunately the drumming of Jose Luis Pacheco is not so strong, with matters not helped by the fact that the sound of the drumkit especially the snare is not very good. All the lyrics are in english, the voice of Pedro Jimenez is not bad but he can not help a strong accent which can put off some people.

The album opens with the short instrumental "Open your gates", very neo, which leads to the upbeat "Answers" featuring several time signature changes, 7/8, 10/8 and 6/8 at least.

"Felling a tree" starts with a powerful interplay between keyboards and guitar and changes mood with a soft middle section, the style similar to Marillion's Script or Fugazi albums.

"Some faces of a runaway rabbit" is a nice instrumental starting with semi-classical piano followed by faster sections, with several dynamic changes and nice atmospheres.

"Visons from the park" starts with a very IQ-like keyboard arpeggio combined with powerful guitar, quickly settling down to a soft 5/4 beat. Again the typical neo references such as Pendragon come to mind.

"Feather's flight" is a short atmospherical keyboards instrumental, and then we have the 13- minute-plus suite "The sect of ignorance" with multiple tempo changes and again full of typical neo cliches. It has catchy melodies and nice sections but it lacks definition and purpose for a suite.

Two short soft songs close the album, the instrumental "Rain Clouds" based on acoustic guitar with some keyboard layers and "Two factions" also with acoustic guitar and vocals.

Respectable debut and recommendable to Neo fans, but do not expect an outstanding album. It follows the Neo formula too much by the book, it has catchy melodies and musical phrases and several nice developments, but it's not very original and there are better albums in this style, besides the improvable drumming and production. Their following album "A fine stormy weather" is clearly better and features a welcome change of drummer.