BANCO

English albums by Italian prog-rock artists seem to get either love or hate reviews - and a lot of the negative criticism does stem from the vocals. The general uncomfortable feel, the weaker display of emotional content, the heavy accents... okay, this may spoil your average PFM album, but I can hardly see anything wrong with this album! Francesco's heavily accented voice doesn't bother me at all (I'd be hypocritical for saying it did, seeing as how I quite enjoy John Cale) and, as for discomfort, he's not all that bad. He still has all the range and gusto present on their Italian albums, and I get the sense that he already had a good level of fluency in English to begin with. Well, that's the vocals covered!

Musically, almost faultless. The remixed versions of their earlier material (which I'm just starting to get into) don't sound too bad either - certainly not to the excesses of PFM's "Celebration". It's very complex and operatic and shows a significant amount of skill and variety, often in the same song, which helps make the longer pieces easier to digest.

Not the best of what I've heard from BMS so far as my first impressions of "Darwin!" were much higher, but very worthy of 4 stars at the time of writing. If you enjoy Italian Prog in general, or are just curious as to how BMS sound in English, grab a copy while you can (If I read the Obi-Strip correctly, the Japanese K2HD remaster is no longer in production but some retailers may still have it in stock).