CITY OF THE SUN

One of the things which distinguishes the original wave of progressive rock bands from the waves of imitators that came later was that, of course, the original proggers didn't have a prog rock background - not as listeners, and not as performers. They couldn't have, obviously - they all had their musical training and developed their tastes in other fields (typically, but not exclusively, rock) and then brought that diverse range of tastes to the table to serve up the original first-wave prog offerings we know and love. Conversely, many subsequent generations grew up on prog and learned to play their instruments with an eye to producing prog, resulting in an inevitable difference in perspective.

Seven Impale are a group who have clearly listened to their share of prog - the extent of the King Crimson, Mahavishnu Orchestra and Van der Graaf Generator influences evident here demonstrates that - but as musicians they don't come originally from a rock background. Instead, they're a group of musicians who've picked up their training in jazz or classical contexts. The upshot of this is that this is a take on heavy Crimson-esque prog which has a fat slab of jazz fusion incorporated into the recipe, because they have the chops to pull it off, but which never quite descends into aimless meandering because they also have the compositional rigour to avoid that. The end result is an extremely solid debut album.