PAN'TA RHEI

To my humble opinion "Pan'ta Rhei" is one of the most enjoyable records of 2005. Although the music surely is complex on some moments, this is not an album that needs a dozen of spins before satisfying the listener. Especially the excellent melodies make this album from Belgian band Ghiribizzi a must have for fans of neo- prog and prog-metal. The three keyboard members provide the album from splendid symphonic harmonies. Those terrific sounds are just part of excellent compositions like "Asian love". Even though this is the longest track to be found on "Pan'ta Rhei", the basic melody gets stuck inside your head pretty soon. I assume the reason for this is the recurring melody and the wonderful instrumentation. This epic consists of a lot of changes in mood & rhythm. The different sounding parts includes an eastern intro, an acoustic section and even a small blues part. When compared to this, the second song is more compact. "Break down soon" is based on a poppy piano part and has an appealing melody and a catchy rhythm. The trumpet adds to the diversity in the sound.

The voice of the lead singer is often the weak element in the sound of a new prog band but fortunately here it isn't. The voice has some similarities with the way Fish used to sound on the Marillion records. Max Webster the first vocalist from Kayak also comes to mind when focussing on the vocals and the dominant role of the keyboards in the compositions. This group of musicians seems extremely talented.

Despite the fact that there's a lot of keyboard sounds on "Pan'ta Rhei", the guitar riffs are omnipresent throughout the whole album. On some tracks the band tends to prog-metal. "Fires of hell", "Don't fear the unknown" and "The light" are some sort of progressive 'battle' songs like Magnum use to play during their heyday. The keyboards are sounding very eighties & the vocal harmonies are reminiscent to Queen. "The light" has a haunting atmosphere, meaty guitars on the fore, dark sounding keyboards in the background and one lovely cosmic interlude of Floydian space sounds. Here, the cosmic influence is showing from Pete Mush who released the first album of his own project "Quantum Fantay" in the spring of 2005.

An epic like ""Valley of the gold" sums up what this talented tribe of musicians is capable of. This track includes heavy guitars, some excellent moog solo's, dark sounding layers of keyboards and another marvellous cosmic excerpt. The vocals have never sounded more aggressive. The structure of this composition is very good. Its classical middle section would suit a musical quite well. Moreover the basic melody is splendid. "Time" is even better and my personal favourite due to the excellent symphonic harmonies provided by the keyboards.

You won't discover real flaws on this album. Maybe the music could use a full blown sound even though the production is pretty decent. The flying Moog solo's may sound a little outdated nowadays, as a guilty pleasure, I tend to like it ; moreover it suits the sound of the album perfect.

I don't like a ballad like "remember Paris" cause of the pathetic melody line reminiscent to Meat Loaf. On the closing track, the emotionality sounds more real and pure. The melody of this piano ballad seems more inspired. Nice one which closes the album in style.

Conclusion : Ghiribizzi has matured a lot on their second album. It can be hard to deliver a second album that tops the first one but Ghiribizzi achieved this goal. Recommended for those who like energetic prog.