MIRAGE

Except for "Moonmadness", never understood why so many people loves CAMEL, I understand that liking a band is a matter of taste, but always found their music absolutely boring, repetitive and lack of energy, but reading the raving reviews decided to buy "Mirage" and must say that despite having listened it several times, my opinion hasn't changed a bit, being that each time I listen it I like it less.

The album starts with "Firefall" a track that has a bit more of Rock than I usually find in CAMEL, but after a few minutes of this hybrid between soft Jazz, Symphonic and Rock, I want to take the album from the CD player, it's obvious that the band members know their business, but the absolute lack of energy and strength is unbearable, not even the guitar sections made want to listen it.

"Supertwister" is closer to the CAMEL most people like but bores me, soft, bland and repetitive from start to end, again the performance is excellent, but the problem is in the music, seems that the band lacks totally of emotion and imagination, unexciting since the first to the last note.

"Nimrodel / The Procession / The White Rider" is in my opinion the best track of the album, mostly because of the spectacular keyboard sections by "Peter Bardens", but as soon as the vocals start, the magic lost, again that tedious atmosphere and jamming that takes nowhere.

"Earthrise" reminds me a bit of "Moonmadness", but without the versatility of the fourth CAMEL release, in this track the problem is the lack of variation, despite a few stronger moments, the track is so predictable that can't stand it. Again the individual performances are amazing, but placed altogether makes me shout of boring.

Well, at last it's time for "Lady Fantasy", the track so many people consider CAMEL'S masterpiece, so with hope I listen the excellent introduction, seems like this is another band capable of making me applaud, but as the name of the album indicates, it's only a "mirage", because after the first minute, that boredom returns to me. Not an epic, only a long song that could had lasted 3 minutes and probably been better.

Most surely the problem is in me, because the album has an average of 4.36 stars and so many Progressive Rock fans can't be wrong, but no matter how hard I try, will never understand this raving reviews.

Don't dare to say that I don't recommend "Mirage", because most people seem to love it, so will go directly to the 2 stars rating, exclusively for the performance, because the music says nothing for me.