ABRAHAM - ONE ACT ROCK OPERA

There's just a word to qualify this double album: beauty! Do you have a two disc record player? Then, you can put both cd and you'll have one and a half hour of melodic, peaceful, solemn and beautiful trip to the biblic times. Quasar Lux Simphoniae's music is based on soft and coherent melodies that goes on narrating the Abraham's history, with operatic English voices (sometimes a rough male voice contrasting with the clear female), lots of grand piano, acoustic guitar and a very characteristic electric guitar sound. Adding progressive rock elements to baroque and Gregorian moments, "Abraham" 've got all what a prog lover hopes about an opera rock, including the romantic and tragic feeling always floating. The first disc presents a brief "heavy" moment in track 3, with a powerful guitar riff, but the rest is amazingly pretty calm music, sometimes almost classic, and always interesting. Second disc have a strange first track, "Sodom", with eight minutes more "theatrical" than musical, conforming -IMO- the only weak point in the whole opus. There's another brief hard moment at track 5, "The Sacrifice", fitting perfectly with the rest. "Abraham" opera rock is a wonderful album, highly recommended specially to lovers of the most symphonic and classic side of the genre. I repeat the word that qualify it: beauty!

Written by Paolo Paroni (keyboards, piano) & Roberto Sgorlon (guitars, vocals) essentially "Abraham" is a 2 CD classically influenced symphonic prog rock musical exploring the dawn of Christianity. Musically we are transported into a multi layered symphonic landscape of shapes & colors. QUASAR are a 4 piece outfit who play a highly theatrical styled classically influenced prog rock mixing many different style and forms throughout. Instrumentation is quite solid with some tasty analog sounding keyboard work standing out throughout the album much of which is tastefully classically influenced. Vocals actually run like a real stage musical with a cast of different characters and personalities... some words are talked and others sung to the music... always sounding choreographed. Lead female singer Annalisa Malvasio has a lovely and powerful voice reaching a pseudo-operatic style. Hansi Fuchs (INES) makes a guest appearance on this album adding his distinct voice to the minx. Sound reproduction is quite awesome throughout offering some pretty big holographic sounds for your speakers to emit.

Excellent instrumental album, keyboard oriented and with a few weak vocals (usually their songs in English with such accented vocals are not so remarkable, but it neverminds...), which could make it deserve an inferior score.Nevertheless this Rock-Opera concerning the life of Abraham is pretty memorable; and thanks to a couple of keyboardists, the symphonic sound earns a lot, beings very lush and appreciated also by the lovers of such keyboard oriented Symphonic Progressive Rock .The unique defect is probably their use or theatrical effects, which sometimes is not always inspiring, but this is a minor question!!

Recommended anyway!!

A double album about Abraham's life was originally not the most thrilling experience I could have imagined. The music is mostly instrumental and I admit that the start of this work is very promising.

The first three numbers are bombastic, powerful and diverse (even fully neo-prog during What Rights Has My Soul but the quiet and piano oriented The Journey and If A Woman Is Like Wheat are too much on the sleepy side. This aspect is also to be noticed during Trembling Star which holds more of a classical piece of music. The piano is excellent, this is not the problem.

It is also a part during which vocals are very much musical oriented. I'm not a huge fan of this feature either: it is more opera-oriented than rock to my liking. I much prefer the guitar and mood from Night Lover's Silhouettes which also features some fine vocalizing.

An inherent part of choirs awaits you during Berit. It provides a solemn and very church oriented feeling of course. Some majesty as well. I quite like the moving Hospitality and the great and emotional guitar solo. One of my fave.

The second CD opens on a percussion track: Sodom is not the best out of this work. Noisy and loose, it leaves the listener rather perplexed (at least I feel so). Of course, this biblical theme is not the most joyful of all and it was probably difficult to have imagined another representation of this dark episode.

The longest song available on this album is also my favourite. Probably somewhat derivative (Genesis) but this guitar moment strongly reminds the great Firth Of Fifth. The delicacy of the piano only adds to the feeling and the synths part is fully Banks oriented. Did I say Genesis?

One could have thought that the Sacrifice would a lugubrious track; on the contrary it is pretty upbeat with soaring guitar and joyful vocals to finish. The interpretation of Abraham's Death is also a poignant moment of this work.

This is a short double album (ninety minutes). The band would maybe have been inspired in cutting a bit into it and reduce it to, let's say seventy minutes both to have it on the one CD format as well suppressing some less interesting parts (Journey, Sodom and Silver Bridge). As such, this is a good album. Three stars.

A strange story behing the project called QUASAR LUX SYMPHONIAE,as they were found in 1976 by (then drummer,later guitarist) Roberto Sgorlon,but the key figures would join the band a little bit later.The tapes of their first work ''Dead dream'' from 1977 were lost and in early 80's Fabrizio Morassutto would join them.A melodic hard rock album called ''Night hymn'' would be released in 1984,but soon they turned to a more classical-inspired sound,strengthened by the addition of young organist/composer Paolo Paroni.

In 1994 QUASAR LUX SYMPHONIAE released the ambitious Christan-based concept work ''Abraham'',an album containing lots of classical-influenced progressive rock parts,surrounded by a few singer-characters,who played the appropriate roles.The work seems to be standing somewhere between melodic symphonic progressive rock and classical and renaissance music with baroque influences.There are some trully bombastic moments with fiery guitars and driving organ to create a unique hard/progressive sound,filled with aggresive-like,intense vocals.These moments are paused by little suites,containing classical piano parts,usually female choirs,sometimes there is also presence of ultra-melodic guitars and weird synth effects.The overall feeling will travel you back in time in the age of rennaisance,bringing to mind bands in the style MINIMUM VITAL in the alternating guitar/keyboards moments or E.L.P in the bombastic ones,and even THE ENID in the pure classical approach.So,if you like keyboard-driven progressive rock with classical doses,you should purchase this album as soon as possible.A well-crafted and trully interesting project!