STILL THE WATERS

"Still the Waters" is the debut full-length studio album by US progressive rock act Epignosis. The album is a self-released affair. Epignosis is the brainchild of Robert W. Brown, Jr., who handles all intruments and vocals on the album. Tasha Brown delivers a guest vocal performance on "An Everlasting Kingdom" but other than that "Still the Waters" is the epitome of a one-man project.

"Still the Waters" is a 5 track, 56:00 minutes long album, with all 5 tracks exceeding the 7 minutes mark. The music is symphonic progressive rock done the American way, which means that the influences come from both the big British names but also from US artists like Kansas, Neal Morse (with whom Epignosis share a Christian lyrical approach) and Spock's Beard. Some parts of the instrumental delivery are relatively skillfully played (the keyboards and the guitars) without standing out as anything special within the genre, but the drums on the album are not very well played. They are very basic and quite lifeless to listen to and as a result the music is generally lacking dynamics. The melody lines are not that memorable either, which of course aren't helped along by the rather flat and monotone vocal delivery. Robert W. Brown, Jr. often sounds uncomfortable and strained beyond his capabilities. The material generally aren't that exciting and especially the monotone and way too long opening track score low in my book. To my ears the closing 19:48 minutes long "No Shadow of Turning" is the highlight of the album. That's probably because that's the track that succeeds best in imitating 70s symphonic prog. I especially hear some obvious Genesis references in that track.

The sound production is not what I would call of professional quality. It obviously lacks the hands and critical ears of a professional producer. It sounds flat and lacks dynamics. The vocals, the drums, the bass and the clean guitars sound especially below standard.

I usually hail the whole romantic DIY approach to creating music and sometimes I pick up self-released albums, that are fully on par with professional label releases, which is of course a great treat to get either for free or at a "Name Your Price" tag. "Still the Waters" falls into the other catagory of self-released albums, and that's the amateur self-released catagory. Some of those releases can still be greatly enjoyable because they can be full of adventurous and daring ideas, but quite often they are mared by poor execution and bad sound productions and I guess I feel "Still the Waters" applies to that description. A 2 star (40%) rating is warranted.