FROM THE DAYS OF DEUCALION - CHAPTER 1

Neo Prog by a Dutch band totally new to me, interesting. I'm having some positive expectations for this nice looking album. At first the low volume level fooled me until I understood to turn the stereo notably louder than usual. Yeah, all right, this is pretty functionable and typical Neo stuff, derivative mostly from GENESIS. Solid, clear guitar sounds and a lot of keyboards. The compositions too have some IQ style here and there, with some slowly built dramatic tension, but the music is never as effective as IQ can be.

The vocals are the weak link to me, sounding like a cross between PENDRAGON's boyish Nick Barrett and an effort to be a Peter Gabriel clone. Occasionally, at least on calmer parts, that effort succeeds, but frankly I'm very bored of vocalists who try to sound like Gabriel. Here it too often means just stuffy, bad vocals. Luckily many tracks are instrumentally oriented, so the vocals are not ruining the whole (nearly 54 minute) album. But honestly the level of compositions on this album is very uneven, variating beween pretty good and annoyingly bad ('Hurricane'). After all my wish of having found a new good Neo band was not quite fulfilled. Either 2½ or three stars, since the best tracks may be potential growers.