THE FALL OF BLISS

Methexis is a one-man product (with just a little help from others, e.g. a drummer) by the Greek musician Nikitas Kissonas. Well, these facts have been already repeated many times, I'll concentrate in my reception of the music itself! It may not represent my ideal prog rock for all of its parts, but at least I'm impressed by the high technical level. The nearly 9-minute opener - that can be heard on Methexis' home page - gives quite an accurate picture, this is rather dark-mooded and approaching Heavy Prog / Prog Metal. That's not the genre I'm very familiar with, so my comparisons come from more mainstream prog. I think GENTLE GIANT could be one classic band Kissonas has listened to, and from the later bands I'd bet on some American and Swedish eclectic proggers such as SPOCK'S BEARD, ECHOLYN or BEARDFISH, in addition to the heavier side of prog (ANATHEMA is mentioned here).

The second track 'Poetic Mirrors Wound Heroes' has some Gentle Giant -vibe, then the third one, the creepy 'Those Howling Wolves' brings some of PORCUPINE TREE's mellower tracks to mind. Kissonas favours slow, stretched vocal lines, and frankly later on it gets a bit to my nerves, that doomy line-by-line preaching, for example in the 4-part title track: "Join hands / join minds / join hearts / free you sight / burn the flags" etc. and similarly later on: "Leave your house / leave your job / leave your needs / leave your clones / we are one / common breath / we're the whole". I'm not very fond of his vocals, but he does that job pretty well too, in addition to his impressive multi-instrumentalism (guitars, bass, mandolin, keys, programming). My favourite track is the melancholic and delicate piano-based 'Lines on a Bust' (piano played by someone called Jargon).

'Track the Saviours' is heavy and fast, obviously my least fave here. 'The Aftermath' is again slow and doom-spirited but nicely very delicate in arrangement, using mostly just acoustic guitar plus strings-reminding keys (mellotron?). Could ANEKDOTEN be an accurate comparison? The roughly 21-minute title epic has definitive highlights of the album. The short instrumental 'Intro' has some bird-singing and beautiful acoustic guitar, reminding of STEVE HACKETT. 'Part 1' (8:20) is an eclectic composition with many changes in tempo, and a large scale of dynamics. I always like it when the atmosphere is being created by minimal layers of sounds, but on the other hand the vocal parts here are among the most irritating as I said.

But despite some parts I dislike, I can say that listening to the whole album is clearly on the positive side, and the 51 minutes (I lessened the four minutes of 'Track the Saviours' that I skip) seem to go surprisingly fast, even though I'm a bit unhappy with how the epic evolves and ends. With more instrumental portions this would have been better to my ears. But anyway, a very good effort. Kissonas has clearly given his all into this project. Best of luck for future projects!