D'ICI ET D'AILLEURS

A one album wonder French band.

This band is operating in the same landscape as Atoll, Ange and Mona Lisa. French symphonic prog with strong vocals and a lot of folk rock and theatre music influences. This is a sub category of symph prog as far as I am concerned.

Exode uses both male and female vocals. The principal vocals is the male vocals though. The main instruments are guitars, keyboards and some flute in addition to bass and drums. Both the vocals and the instrumentation is very good.

The overall quality is good. But there are no real killer tracks here and nothing here I would label as great. This album is satisfying to large extent, but nothing more.

3 stars

This appears to be the only album by the French band Exode. Instrumentally, they are competant. The music is a blend of traditional symphonic prog, with quite a bit of seventies style psychedelic rock mixed in. While none of it stands out to me, there is enough variation and inventiveness to keep it from getting boring.

The problem I have with the album are the vocals. I don't know if this is a French cultural thing, but I am starting to get fearful of listening to albums from French prog bands. Too many of them use a dreadfully over-emotive style of singing, that comes across as more shouting than music. Roland Lelong is one of those types of singers. At his best he is barely tolerable, but mostly he is annoying. At least he only deos that forced theatrical maniacal laugh once.

Angelique Raoux, the second vocalist is better. When singing alone, she has a fair enough voice, but when accompanying Lelong, she tends to match his abrasiveness. Unfortunately, she does not sing along very much.

If this was an instrumental album, it would rate three stars. But alas, it's only a two.