PIRANA/PIRANA II

This CD serves up both Pirana's albums without any omissions or added bonus tracks.

Pirana was an Australian band who started out as bit of a split personality between 1970s pop and Santana like jazz. The first album, track 1-7 if I am not wrong, tells that story. This album has a split personality, but still an excellent hammond organ sound which saves this album from a disaster.

The second album, track 8-16 if I am not mistaken, is much more a Santana copy. Both the Santana the band and Carlos Santana, the solo artist. This album does lack any identity and charm though. Charm the first album, strangely enough, had in abundance. The band played a couple of big gigs and then split up because of the lack of commercial success. Listening to this compilation, I have sympathy for that decision. Pirana is not the worst band in the history of prog rock and this compilation is OK if you like Santana. I think two stars would suffice.

2 stars