VISIONS

Aether

Symphonic Prog

3.44 | 57 ratings

From Progarchives.com, the ultimate progressive rock music website

Brazilian Progressive Rock was in flames through mid-90's and mid-00's. We've seen many bands releasing albums out of nowhere and then? disappearing out of nowhere too.

Aether is one of these bands. Tough they started in the 70's they just recorded their first album, Visions (1999), in late 90's. After the second album in 2002 they disappeared. Thinking about that is quite incredible that their website is still online.

The band was formed by Alberto Curi (keyboards and vocals), Vinicius Brazil (guitars), Fernando Carvalho (bass) and Brandon Ramos (drums). To tell you the truth, Aether doesn't have an impressive debut in Visions (1999).

Visions (1999) is in fact an almost instrumental album, having only one song with vocals ('A New Bright Day') and one with speech as an intro ('Kings & Knights'). Then we have a CD divided into two. The first half has 7 tracks soaked with keyboards and guitars that sometimes are completely out of place, drums and basses that edge the unbearable and corny melodies. Despite the good vocal track with lots of Camel influence, the band's sound is absurdly overproduced and it seems a 80's album, even though it was 1999.

The second half of the CD is more interesting and it's occupied pretty much by the 'Altenburg Suite'. This suite has 6 parts in more than 18 minutes. It's hard to understand why it was divided into 6 different tracks, even though there's no blank spaces between the tracks. A weird suite made pretty much of sounds (like horses, people, etc) and short themes. Good violin guest is presented in 'The Lake' (Glauco Fernandes) and good organ guest in 'Essence Of Freedom' (Eduardo Campos).

Two songs, 'The Woods' and 'The Ocean' that sound out of place after the suite finish the album. Both of them without any surprise or even light to make them shine.

Resuming, a really weak album. Tough I have to admit that the CD artwork (cover, booklet, etc) is amazing. One more case where the box is great and the contents inside not.

Key track: A New Bright Day

ProgShine | 2/5 | 2010-6-12

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