WHISPERS AND SCREAMS

2,5 stars, really. Interesting sophmore release by this american prog rock band. After I read a fellow reviewer opinion about Whispers And Screams, I was quite curious about it. And I can say John Fontana & co are a quite talented bunch, but are not quite there in terms of a personal sound. They are close, but not quite there yet. I think their first efford, Welcome To The Freakroom had a stronger sense of direction. And their sound is not really symphonic, by the way, at least in my opinion: the occasional Hammond organ runs, a bit of mellotron here and there and some odd time signatures are not enough to label them as such.

Not that Whispers And Screams does not have its (brief) symphonic moments, specially on the instrumental tracks like The Seduction Of Harold Lauder. But most of the time they play a kind of american flavoured heavy rock, sometimes bordering the prog metal (the opener Captain Trips is a good example), sometimes crossover prog (The Horseman Ride) and sometimes not progressive at all (Coming Back To You is a typical southern rock ballad, while Angel is an average rock ballad). But don´t get me wrong, the songs themselves are quite good and well crafted

The problem I see here is like so many good albums I listen to, Whispers And Screams lacks a kind of personal identity. Every track here sounds like it was done by a different band. There is very little or no common ground that links the tunes to make the album a whole (or maybe I didn´t get the album´s concept!). Certainly those guys are more than able to do it in the near future if they will absorb their many references and produce a unified work that will have their own mark. But this is promising stuff, no doubt about it. If you like the aforementioned styles you should check this out.