MINDQUAKE

Edera were a Milan-based band formed in the mid-90s and who now have fallen silent for a decade in terms of new releases. This is truly a bummer because, based on the strength of this work, they should have made a larger splash than they did. Mindquake is their third full-length album, and it is on another level completely from that which came before. Their first two albums were good and had some very cool tracks, but Mindquake, coming a decade after their second album, really succeeded in reaching their full potential. If the idea was to make one final album before dissolving the band, they nailed it. Indeed, there is so much intensity packed into each track that it does feel like a band shooting for the moon as if they knew it was their last work. Of course, that's my speculation. Maybe they'll be back someday.

Everything about Mindquake ups the ante over what they've done before. Starting from simple presentation issues, the rather amateur-looking album covers are replaced by this cool sci-fi image expressing the emotional and/or physical pain of the protagonist, I'd presume. The messy 19-title tracklist of the previous album, some just a minute or so long, are replaced with solid, lengthier tracks with succinct titles, seemingly aiming for a tighter conceptual package. Ironically, as cool as their album design is here, this is their only release that didn't get a CD release. Tragic it is that this is only available digitally currently and only from a couple places. (Since the band's website is gone, I will link to a source for album via the 'Official Website' button on their artist page so all reading can find a place to listen.) If you love this album as much as I did, be sure to download a copy from one of the official sites in case this work disappears someday. I rarely bother with that, but this album is worth the trouble.

Getting to the music finally, I did not expect much going in, yet I was blown away by this album. Just to start: emotionally dark and heavy, tightly wound, constricting feelings balanced with release. Every track is akin to a dramatic, self-contained stage scene almost. Often described as a combination of symphonic and neo-prog and, while that's not wrong per se, there is more to it than that. There is almost a gothic modern rock vibe as well, almost a veil that a Cure album might possess. I think this album is a conceptual sibling-in-spirt to other stylish and somber works like Peter Gabriel's Up, Marillion's Brave, or Moongarden's Round Midnight. So much intensity and emotional fuel is packed into the tightly constructed compositions. The keyboards create both oppressive and serene backgrounds while layered guitar parts thrash back and forth. The drumming expertly walks the line of keeping the tracks taut while allowing some controlled turbulence. The vocalist is an intense, heart-on-sleeve guy like a Thom Yorke, Fish, or as others mentioned, Marco Gluhmann. His style could be off-putting to some, but I thought it was perfect for the material.

The songs can be very dense, impenetrable, and sometimes feel oppressive and claustrophobic, but they do have sections of relief and places to breathe, usually arriving in the form of a lovely piano run or some acoustic guitar or just a softer passage. While I didn't have lyrics to catch all the nuance, the songs musically feel very much like the running diary of someone dealing with immense pain, bouncing from crisis to crisis in the search for serenity. The fact that the music is able to impart such a journey on me with ease via the form of a unique progressive rock sound is what makes it a stylistic masterpiece to me. I also feel like the creativity of the songwriting and the performances of every individual player here are off-the-charts good. Everyone is hitting the sweet spots that allow you to feel the emotion and enjoy the "theater" of it.

If there is one flaw I'd mention, it might be that the production is not as crisp or clear as I typically like. However, given the solemn conceptual nature of the material, this might actually work to the benefit of the album by helping to create the rather unnerving, anxious vibe the songs require in places. Despite being a difficult album full of material some might call a little depressing, I found it a very satisfying album that likely would have made my best of 2015 list had I heard it then. It is tragic that there is no CD and that it garnered so little attention from progressive rock fans and prog writers. I highly recommend checking this out if you like the kind of emotionally heavy works I mentioned above.

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