CRISALIDA

Espiritu´s first album would be another of the "ground breaking" albums released in Argentina, for it was also one of the first Prog albums from a national band. As stated before Prog is not the most popular genre here, yet Espiritu managed to build a loyal cult following due to this and the next album: "Libre y Natural".

Espiritu´s music is typical symphonic prog with some hard passages here and there, but overall there are no great inovations to be found, keeping that in mind, this album shows 5 good musicans doing some quality music, which is always welcomed. Mainly inspired in the great Italian bands like Banco, PFM or even the one shot Museo Rosenbach, Espiritu follows a similar path, yet the music comes of a bit less complex, with a bigger use of the electric guitar and, sadly, not as good vocals as the before mentioned Italian bands. Fernando Berge might be a good singer, but he will never be compared with the greats, something which seems to be quite the case in Argentinian prog... what a pitty.

Crisalida is a concpet album about what seems to be a very interesting theme, the relation of the mind, body and soul in every one of us. It´s interesting because in future years another band would take this ideas and develop them even more, I´m talking about Tool with their magnum opus Lateralus. Sure, Keenan must have never heard or Espiritu... but it´s still quite interesting. Yet, the concept might be very good, but the actual lyrics are a bit too simple for their own sake, making some vocal lines almoust cheesy and patchy...

Overall, this album is good, it has it´s flaws, but if you remember that this is a debut album, from a band that comes from a country where prog wasn´t yet "installed" then you might like it even a bit more.