THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY

Utter and complete disappointment. I am familiar with only their later stuff (Selective Memory), but basing my estimation that there was early era, then commercial era and much later "this" era of goodness, I was expecting something as good as SM. Guess again I suppose. Too much spoken word here, too many experimentation parts (that works only half of the time), not enough melody (remember Selective Memory), mostly reverting to Avantgarde. That may work with Univers Zero (quite similar at times), but not here with the Venezuelans. But to be honest, it's not a bad album per se, it's just not what I've expected, not what I usually like, but there are qualities that I don't dare to bury under too low rating, hence 3 stars.