BOLD TRAVELS

Seti are a Chilean neo-prog outfit who, on this album at least, play in a style which reminds me an awful lot of classic- period Arena (say, somewhere between the Visitor and Contagion). In fact, they're sufficiently good at the Arena sound that they've actually managed to get Clive Nolan to guest on keyboards - and, indeed, Marillion's very on Steve Rothery contributes a bit of guitar and Damian Wilson of Threshold appears at one point on vocals.

I hate to say it, but getting Damian Wilson to stick around may have been a good plan, because to be honest the lead vocals from Jaime Scalpello are a weakness here. To give him his due, I don't think this is necessarily his plot; the problem is that the lyrics he has been given are rather clunky, and his delivery inevitably suffers as a result. The lyrics are in English, and I suspect this is an illustration of how singing outside of your native language can be a bit tricky. The level of fluency needed to have a good ear to what to emphasise and when is surprisingly high, as is the level of fluency required to write lyrics in another language which sound natural, and when you have a lyricist who doesn't quite have that level of fluency writing for a singer who doesn't then you end up in a little trouble.

On top of that, the vocals tend towards being a bit intrusive; even if they were delivered perfectly, I suspect they would annoy me for how prominent they are. Instrumentally speaking, this is good stuff, but the vocals slightly spoil it for me.