HINTERLAND

Well, I'm afraid I agree with Hughes once again. I first heard this band when they performed at NearFest 2005. The music seemed interesting, but the sound was not so hot for them (which happens for some of the bands that are not headliners, but generally the sound is good at NF). Overall though, I wasn't terribly impressed, but I was intriegued enough to pick up this album. In some ways it was better than the performance because I could more clearly hear what they are doing. On the other hand it confirmed my suspicion that the tracks are just too long. The overall musical direction is a mix of the great early 90's bands from the same country (Anglagard, Anekdoten) as well as a fair amount of early 70's prog (some Genesis and Crimson influences). Sadly, they don't do anything new with any of it. This in and of itself doesn't bother me that much if done well, but in the case of this band they need to tighten up the songs and arrangements. I suspect that had this album been broken into 6 or 7 seperate songs, it would have been far more engaging to me. It's not that there is anything particularly bad here, it is only that the tracks just go on and on and on. And I love epic tracks. But they have to go somewhere and I just don't feel that these do. Still, I like the album enough to think that this band shows great promise if they can just focus their songwriting a bit more and tighten up the arrangements. Nevertheless, I will be interested in hearing what they do next. A solid 3 stars, with a star off for meandering song and lack of originality respectively.