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Standarte - Curses and Invocations  CD (album) cover

CURSES AND INVOCATIONS

Standarte

 

Heavy Prog

3.57 | 34 ratings

From Progarchives.com, the ultimate progressive rock music website

Sean Trane
Special Collaborator
Prog Folk
3 stars 3,5 stars really!!!

Behind this sinister title hides a sombre and melancholic album, the second from Standarte. The debut sounded a lot like Atomic Rooster, with a flurry of organs and great ambiances making for a fairly enjoyable retro-prog album, but by all means, it was not groundbreaking! The least we cab say is that their second album is not anymore inventive than its predecessor, but the influences changed towards a more Scandinavian feeling somewhere close to early Anekdoten and Landberk (loads of analogue KB and an orgy of mellotrons) with shades of ITCOTCK or slightly ELP-ish hints. Clearly these guys are also influenced by some Satanism in their texts (well to be expected, as they record for the label Black Widow), but this does not mean that their music is macabre or morbid, quite the contrary, it borders often on the sublime with use (and abuse) of mellotrons (both Gabbani and Profetti play it as well as the Moog), but there is much less energy on this album as opposed to the debut. Although most tracks are good calibre with apt English singing, the highlight is clearly the three part 12 min Mooning Around Mill Hill and the almost 9 min Ordeal

If you are a proghead eternally stuck in the 70's but do not mind the 90's group dedicated at reproducing this type of music (hence the name retro prog) , then Italy holds many surprises for you among which the more recent Wicked Minds and Areknames.

Sean Trane | 3/5 |

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