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Genesis - Nursery Cryme CD (album) cover

NURSERY CRYME

Genesis

 

Symphonic Prog

4.42 | 3580 ratings

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Eclipse
Prog Reviewer
5 stars Maintaining the same fairy-tale feel found on their previous masterpiece, Trespass, here we have a less dark album but still magic and more pleasant to listen to. The cover art reflects exactly the content of the album, it has that story book feel and is a travel to the land of phantasy. Did anyone realised that the ground here also appears smaller on the Foxtrot cover? And that the opening track is quoted on Willow Farm? Actually, Nursery Cryme and Foxtrot are my absolute GENESIS' faves, both deliver top quality emotional music in an amazing epic delivery, something that only good old 70's symphonic prog could magically deliver to us.

The album opens with "Musical Box", an embryo of "Supper's Ready" in terms of structure. This song contains several different faces, from the mellow parts until the quasi-metal middle section being exciting and relaxing at the same way. This is the first REALLY amazing GENESIS' song, and thing tend to only get amazing from here too. "Return of Giant Hogweed" follows a short Collins' sung ballad and is also a great epic with a sci-fi theme attached to it. Once again Gabriel shows how versatile he can be with his voice, at the same way he did on "The Knife". With its classical music influenced intro, the song has fantastic parts and shows a high level of maturity of the band members in terms of compositions. "Seven Stones" kicks in and it is the most moving moment of the album. It has a tear-producer mellotron solo at the ending courtesy of amazing Mr. Banks and, like "Harlequin" (a short acoustic piece placed before the closing epic), shows great vocal harmonies by Phil and Peter. "Harold the Barrel" is an embryo of "Willow Farm" and "Battle of Epping Forest", a funny trakc with a ironically tragic content within it. A cool song that has a nice piano part at the ending to flow well on "Harlequin". The closing song, "Fountain of Salmacis", is literally a class of mellotron and guitar. The band mates are playing their instruments amazingly well and Gabriel shows nice levels of voice here. It has a groundshaking guitar solo at the middle with clearly strong classical music accents, and this song apparently inspired ANGLAGARD on the second song from their album Epilog.

Overall a fantastic album that makes an excellent sequel to Trespass and shows how strong the band's ideas could become. For me, Trespass, this one and Foxtrot work as one full album together, all magic and honestly don't have one single minute of weakness in them.

Eclipse | 5/5 |

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