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Ruphus - Ranshart CD (album) cover

RANSHART

Ruphus

 

Heavy Prog

3.18 | 67 ratings

From Progarchives.com, the ultimate progressive rock music website

Warthur
Prog Reviewer
2 stars Ranshart sees Ruphus changing their style dramatically and aiming for an early Yes sound. ("Early" meaning from the debut album to the Yes Album or thereabouts.) Whilst I can see why some musicians might consider this a canny move when Yes seemed on the verge of becoming completely inaccessible following the (brilliant) experiments of Tales From Topographic Oceans and Relayer, at the same time the approach the band take is so crass and cynical that it becomes impossible to overlook the shortcomings of their cloned sound.

Aslec Nilson makes the occasional bid to mimic Chris Squire's distinctive bass sound and almost succeeds, but all this does is underline how far they fall short of their target. Likewise, Rune Ostdahl is no Jon Anderson, no matter how much he cribs from Anderson's lyrical focuses and vocal style.

I have no objections to bands that try to recapture the classic sound of earlier groups - hell, I wouldn't be as fond of neo-prog as I am if that were the case - but I only dig clone groups if they're able to actually approach the standards of the band they are imitating, or if they bring their own ideas to the table to spice up an otherwise played-out formula. As it is, Ruphus achieve neither on this album, and the only thing they accomplish is the loss of the more interesting sound of their debut album. This is a crying shame.

Warthur | 2/5 |

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