LIVE

I saw them live in Verviers a bit after the release of this record but as a quartet and with Benoit Moerlen's brother Pierre (of GonG and Moerlen's Gong fame) and boy were they impressive. As Pierre constantly switched from drums to Vibraphones to make duet with brother Benoit , this created some quite novel music to me. Hansford Rowe was the other mainman on stage and clearly the leader of this formation.

As for this record bought on that very night, the music developped here is still incredibly percussive and somewhat linked to the madness of the latter 70's Gong (without Deavid Allen) and to a lesser extent Brand X but lacking real inventivity. Sinister Minister is definitely my fave track on here and the closer also pleases me well, also. The rest sounds to me as average run-of-the-mill stuff that most fusion groups have a tendency of dishing out by the truckload. Actually , I feel relatively awkward to say this because I have a good idea of the amount of work it takes to create such music , and only one man to discredit it. Such is not my goal or intent but the potential buyer must be warned somehow. The concert , I saw was much better and unfortunately does not represent a facet of the band on record. No matter what , for Fusionheads, this album is still very much worth the investigation and maybe also the investment.

Gongzilla is a spin off of Gong. We're talking the Pierre Moerlin version rather than the Daevid Allen version. While I like both versions of Gong, Pierre's is still my preferred as it was my introduction to Gong.

What you get is music in the style of Pierre Moerlen's Gong with a harder edge to it. The core of the band is three musicians who played in that lineup before Daevid took back the reins of Gong: Bon Lozaga, Hansford Rowe, and Benoit Moerlen (Pierre's brother). Pierre is no longer with us, unfortunately, but Gongzilla is working on a new studio album. I'm guessing the guitarist here who sounds an awful lot like Allan Holdsworth is David Fiuzynski, but maybe it's Bon or both. (Holdsworth and David Torn have also guested on Gongzilla studio albums.) I really envy the folks who saw this show in Quebec City back in 1998. Hope they'll come around to my area sometime soon. Judging from this CD these guys are not to be missed live, if you get the opportunity.

I find myself in a bit of a difficult situation here. Whilst rather bemused by the band's attempts to practically copy the Pierre Moerlen's Gong approach, there are times when they get things right. This live performance is one of those moments.

Opinions differ on live v. studio material. Here the live stuff by this band appears to be far superior to their studio outputs. Not that there is anything markedly different, but one can detect the excitement and adrenalin rush in a one take, no overdubs delivery - and it works miracles.

There are moments when the music approaches Brand X territory, albeit not with the same complexity. In short, a very pleasing performance that PMG, or Jazz-Rock fans could immediately identify with. Easily 4.5 as the best Gongzilla release.