VILJANS ÖGA

A Strong Return.

After nearly twenty years, cult Prog Rock band Anglagard return with their third album, "Viljans Oga". Their debut album "Hybris", released in 1992, is already considered a major classic in the realm of Progressive Rock, and "Epilog" is a decent following to the masterpiece. The high anticipation of "Viljans Oga", as a consequence, was pretty understandable, and at its release, the album was immensely praised by fans. And it is for a reason; the band manages to keep the quality stakes high even after twenty years, by delivering another fantastic, complex, and challenging record.

Anglagard deliver to the public exactly what a fan might expect they'd deliver: an LP with extremely refined instrumentation, breathtaking musicianship, and excellent production. All four songs are structured to near perfection, and their songwriting skills haven't lost their power either. But it's in the executing and the planning where the band succeeds in the most, despite the fact that we're still dealing with great songwriters here. There is a noticeable difference on "Viljans Oga", and that is the absence of vocals. Although it would have been nice to hear at least a little bit of singing, to give more heterogeneity to the flow of the music, there really isn't a spot on the album where they could have been inserted, which means that in a way, their decision was a wise one. If there is one gripe that could have been fixed, that would have been the length of the whole thing: an hour for this kind of music seems to be a little too much, and there some parts in these four songs that could have been cut out, although all of the parts are pure gold.

"Viljans Oga" can't help but being a great album, perhaps not a la par with an album such as "Hybris", (considering that for accomplishing a full blown masterpiece, they simply needed to shorten the album and make the songs a bit more different from one another) but nevertheless a release worth revisiting again and again, because of its impeccable musicianship and fantastic songwriting.

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