Reviews

In recent years The Flower Kings have become a veritable melting pot of all sorts of family offshoots, which, in their devotion to the musical heritage of the prog classics, have no equal in the progressive rock world. It often seems like…

Feedback is a young band from Tolmin playing instrumental music best described as progressive rock. They've put out two studio albums so far, and the single Drobljenec is a kind of teaser for their latest album Od blizu, which just came…

I've known the name Magrathea for quite a while, and I first got to know their music through samples on their website. I finally decided to give the whole album a shot too, and keyboardist Glenn Alexander was happy to oblige&scaro

Tindersticks are a pretty seasoned English rock band from Nottingham. It's really more of a collaboration between singer Stuart Staples and keyboardist David Boulter, who are for the most part solely responsible for all the band's music

"Xanadu" is the soundtrack to the film of the same name, directed by Robert Greenwald. Even though it counts as a regular part of their discography, it isn't an official Electric Light Orchestra album but a joint project with Olivia

"Presto" is the album where all the "former" Rush fans of limited musical breadth and enlightenment, who turned their backs completely on the band's output between 1982 and 1987, found

"Hold Your Fire" is the album where Rush hit the peak of their "synth" era sound and songwriting style. The guys kept Peter Collins at the production helm, so the new album preserved the sound

After a very good self-titled debut, Feedback are back with their second album, titled Od blizu. It comes out just a few months after the debut, though the first record was actually recorded much earlier. With their first album and their…

"Power Windows" is the album where Rush finally polished up the synth-era sound of the eighties they'd started shamelessly developing with "Signals" (1982). It's the obvious successor to "Grace Under Pressure" with absolu

""Hold Your Fire" is the peak of Rush's "synth eighties" era. After it, the guys started reviving the rock-style placement of the individual instruments in the production. The keyboards began sliding into the background, and the guitar…

"Sleepwalking" marks a fairly successful return to the roots for Magnum, while also uncovering some new, more refined sonic directions that hadn't usually been this prominent in their sound before. This turn to

Labyrinth is a young Croatian jazz outfit that just dropped its self-titled debut. It took them a full two years to record this album, and given how long they sweated over their compositions, you'd expect something seriously special

Neurasthenia is a young thrash metal band from neighboring Italy, and they borrowed their name from George Miller Beard, who in 1869 defined neurasthenia as a psychopathological condition with symptoms of fatigue, nervousness, headaches,…

Kivimetsan Druidi were founded in 2002 by the Koskinen brothers with the aim of playing folk metal in the vein of fellow Finns Moonsorrow, whom the brothers count as the biggest influence on their music. After a ton of lineup changes and a…

The minimalism of new wave production at the turn of the seventies into the eighties, revolutionarily bent on hunting for digital-electronic approximations to replace the old organic liveliness of the natural sound of classic instru

This album is the logical follow-up to "Moving Pictures" and a logical step up from its sound. The Rush sound gets a new look, floating on the blissful sound of (by today's standards primitive) Oberheim synthesizers. On a superficial…

Ephrat are a new and very promising progressive rock band from Israel, a country that doesn't exactly boast a rich tradition in the genre. »No One’s Words« is their debut, a convincing and ambitious fusion of traditional and modern…

The undisputed champions of hard rock thunder, those Aussie uncles you might know as AC/DC, are finally back at the end of 2008, this time with the sensational Black Ice. You could say it's about time! Stiff Upper Lip turned out to be

Evergrey are probably one of the most original-sounding bands to come out of Sweden, a country drowning in average power metal bands and a heap of melodic death metal stemming from the so-called Gothenburg school, which sadly

"Forever In Time," the sixth studio album (and fifth since their 1990 reunion) from the eternal melodic hard rockers, one of the best-known names of the new wave of British heavy metal,

Britain's Paradise Lost have a hugely colorful twenty-year career behind them, full of plenty of highs and lows. Already with their debut album Lost Paradise (1990), together with fellow countrymen Anathema and My Dying Bride, they were…

Gary Moore is a name most people know mainly from the second half of the '80s and the early '90s, when the former Thin Lizzy/Colosseum II troubadour was successfully building on the recognition of his solo career. After a triumphant stint…

"Goodnight L.A.", easily the weakest chapter in the Magnum story, was a side effect of a way-too-long stay in Los Angeles, America's famous mecca of kitsch, and the usual rock-star excesses that came with it z

Seven That Spells is the name of yet another one of Niko Potočnjak's bands. It's actually the primary project of this versatile musician, and he's been at it for quite a while, whereas Tigrova Mast is a relatively fresh venture. But one t

After the exceptional album Happy Wretched Family, the Los Angeles duo Non Credo, made up of Joseph Berardi and Kira Vollman, are back on the music scene. It took more than ten years for the new record to see the light of day. And so the…

Cassandra Wilson is a well-known American vocalist who has been active on the world music scene for almost three decades, and it's no surprise that she's become one of the most established singers in the US in that time, since her…

The band has been known to a wider audience since 1990, when they released a debut album with the simple title Firehouse. The guys come from the US state of Oklahoma, and after just a few gigs at home they had already signed po

Cult British prog pop fusionists It Bites are back with "The Tall Ships", their first studio album in almost twenty years. Now that it's out, it's safe to say the move paid off and that this is a succ&

Mariza is the name of a Portuguese artist born in Mozambique. In no time at all she became one of the most popular singers in Portugal, and you could say she carries on the folk-pop tradition (we're talking Portuguese fado style) in the…

Three strapping lads and an angry girl make up the Swedish standard-bearers of a new movement: street metal. Sales slogans have always worked like a drug on the masses. So what does this coinage mean? Basically a bare-bones rock…

After most of the lineup walked out following the release of Self Mutialtion (2001), the French death/thrash metal champs fell into a painful, years-long search for themselves and their sound. Their next two releases, Machinery (2002) and…

Label: EMI RecordsRelease date: March 1, 1973Production: Pink FloydAlbum length: 43.09 minGenre: Progressive Rock/Art RockRating: 10/10 What on earth is there left to write about "the dark side of the moon"? It's an extraordinary…

What more could anyone possibly write about the "dark side of the moon", that extraordinary album which, more than three decades after its release, is still a global music phenomenon like no other, one that had a revolutionary influ

Cult neo-prog veterans Pendragon have finally pulled off, with "Pure", the album celebrating their 30th anniversary, what they failed to achieve on its underwhelming predecessor "Believe&l

The nerves of many a Queen fundamentalist were put through the test of a lifetime when, in 2004, Paul Rodgers practically overnight stepped into the shoes of the immortal Freddie Mercury, once the lead voice of the giants of blues

(review no. 2 by Peter Podbrežnik) Canadian art rock giants Saga are one of those rare legendary bands that scored their biggest commercial hits back in the early '80s, yet even in the new century keep dropping excellent albums like it's a

After more than thirty years in music, Bob Catley surely needs no lengthy introduction. One of the best British vocalists in the history of rock, he rose to wide fame as a member of the legendary

Welsh-rooted Brit Adele Laurie Blue Adkins is one of the singers reviving the once hugely popular singer-songwriter scene in Britain. The album title is the artist's age when it came out. A carefully thought-out

Nine years have gone by since this triple live CD from Florida thrash metal champions Iced Earth came out, and here I am typing these words on my PC. It's one of those heavy metal documents that stay forever in the heart of every true music…

Jeff Loomis is probably one of the most underrated guitarists in metal. Totally undeserved, if you know his biography and body of work well. So, the short version: Loomis was self-taught and started playing guitar at ten (getting serious at…

Unsun is a brand-new band founded by Mauser, guitarist of Polish death metal veterans Vader, after he left Vader. His new musical vision simply demanded that he set out on new creative paths

When you get a band's CD in your hands, the cover is definitely the first thing that catches your eye. You look at the front, you look at the back, and you let yourself be surprised by how it'll sound. »We have art so that we don't

»Wings Of Heaven« is yet another golden chapter in the story of melodic rock greats Magnum. With it they created one of their most dazzling gems, an album that still rightfully holds a very high spot in the AOR annals

Eight years after "Can't Get There From Here" (1999), they're back! In between, a horrifying catastrophe nearly finished the band off, and the sharks still pulled through it all. Of course, it didn't go without bumps and scrapes.

In the eighties Magma were still breathing, and just as mightily as ever. Christian Vander always knew how to gather a bunch of talented musicians around him who could bring his ideas to life the way they deserve. Retrospektiw 3 sho

Michael Cretu and his Enigma have been on the scene for ages. Who doesn't remember his Gregorian chant touches and his singer and longtime companion Sandra? The pop music annals also hold hits like Mea C

With the live album "Aqualung Live," Jethro Tull have finally proven that in their fifth decade of existence they've become a textbook case of aging music legends living off the fruits of past glories, while the

Maybe only Negligence's debut had us waiting this long and this impatiently, but it's finally here! The Dawn Patrol EP, Before the Dawn, that is! Why it was so hard to wait for it is crystal clear

One night in 1974, Frank sank into an utterly bizarre dream (which begs the question of whether a musical and all-around oddball of his caliber could even dream any other kind of dream) about an unusual encounter

Non Credo is a duo made up of two multi-instrumentalists, the lovely Kira Vollman and Joseph Berardi. They first showed up on the scene in 1988 with Reluctant Hosts. So the band has been around for a long time, and this album is their…

On "Vigilante", their sixth studio album, Magnum successfully built on the huge success of the unforgettable masterpiece "On A Storyteller's Night" (1985), which earned them worldwide fame as champions of melodic rock spiced with mysticism

Another year in our little paradise garden and another Motorhead album! With a similarly benevolent warmth of biblical rhetoric, I could describe the latest incarnation of ear-splitting drone that dropped on us like a kamikaze out of a…

Ivanhoe are a German progressive metal band, known for having once counted Andy B. Franck, the current singer of thrash/power metallers Brainstorm, among their ranks. "Lifeline" is their fifth consecutive studio album, counting from their…

Canadian technical death metal monster Cryptopsy was once considered one of the biggest names in the genre. The albums Blasphemy Made Flesh (1994) and None So Vile (1996) are still regarded as cult classics of technical death metal,

After the excellent "Chase The Dragon" (1982), which gave Magnum their first real breakthrough beyond the narrow core of their fans and brought melodic rock, NWOBHM and art rock lovers together under one roof

After two years, Norway's Kampfar are heading back onto the pagan battlefield with their fourth album, Heimgang, which stays true to Nordic folklore and tradition. The album offers ten anthems of Nordic Pagan

Marillion have been more active in recent years than they've been at almost any point in their long career, except maybe at the very start, which they often seem to want to forget. With the dust from the previous album barely settled, sol

The Croatian band Tigrova Mast came together when Niko Potočnjak, guitarist and keyboardist of Seven That Spells, found two other lunatics willing to help him make music that's as off-the-wall

Maybe you're wondering why we're suddenly reviewing the first and lead single from "A Matter Of Life And Death"?!? A single that came out on 08/14/2006. Well, sometimes a promo gem turns up with a two-year delay. So here I am, holding the…

This is one of the toughest reviews I've ever had to write. Here come the cheerful lads from Veliko Ubeljsko (at the foot of Nanos), Forgotten Eden, now just Eden, with their first proper album in ten years of existence. These guys are…

Belfast Food is a Croatian band that mostly plays music drawing heavily on Irish folk. That's obvious from the name alone. Before I listened to the album I was skeptical that Croats could play good

It's official: Metallica have gone from mighty metal royalty, the kind all their peers once eyed with awe, to a cheap garage band. Anyone who hoped the dismal Saint anger

Ameriška skupina Giant je na drugi plošči "Time To Burn" nadaljevala usmeritev z odličnega prvenca "Last Of The Runaways". Morda so zaplavali v malo trši AOR, še vedno pa se držijo preizku&sca

Is there any unspoken word left about this unique guitarist and singer, whose style has etched itself so deeply into our everyday lives, whether as a member of the mighty Pink Floyd or as a solo artist? This

Pendragon, along with Marillion, IQ and Pallas, is one of the four most important bands that "cooked up" the so-called new wave of progressive rock in the 80s, which revived the audience's interest in the dying musical genre

Extreme's comeback is one of the last, if not the very last, "reunions" of the rock "cyclopses" from 15-plus years ago this year. Cherone and company are hungry for new victories and kicking like they're in their prime.

Melodic rock (or art rock, if you like) heroes Magnum had already come pretty close to their first masterpiece with their third album, »Chase The Dragon«. This album, which was originally supposed to be called »The Spiri

Krema? The Slovenian version of Cream, those British white bluesmen from the late sixties? Nope. Just four Slovenian guys with a totally different musical message. The debut »In naj traja…« is very pr

Crimson Glory, long gone from the collective memory but never forgotten by metalheads with a brain, a Florida attraction that will apparently go down for all time as one of those obscure but cult bands that could have

It's been quite a while since Verve's name last came up in connection with any new projects, and it's been almost exactly ten years since their last album. Richard Ashcroft has put out quite a lot on his own, sure, but with Verve

"On A Storyteller's Night" is one of those magical albums that, years and years down the line, still shines in all its glory at full strength, and keeps firing up the inspiration of countless listeners and musicians

RC2 are a relatively young progressive rock outfit from Venezuela, a country that the world usually knows less for its musical achievements than for gorgeous tropical beaches, lush flora and fauna, and beautiful women, and lately also for…

Motley Crue with a new album after an eight-year break! Did all that chewing on hallucinogenic substances over the years eat away their last brain lobe? Not at all. You know how the saying goes: what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. And…

You could say Black Sabbath made a smart move when they fired Ozzy in 1979 over his drug abuse and unreliability and replaced him with Ronnie James Dio. Two monumental albums followed, first "Heaven and Hell&

Only the third album from a bunch of guys who've known each other very, very well for at least two solid decades, and despite a gap of nearly ten years since the previous record, it's a perfectly logical follow-up to "Missing Link" from…

Rising Dream, from Zadar in our southern neighbor Croatia, have done a great job disguising what they're really about. Going by the cover of their debut "Failed Apocalypse", the band's logo and even the band name, I steered clear of them…

Here we have the second album this year from Sweden's Blackwinds, which in an age of dismal album sales is nothing short of phenomenal. This time they went for a logo change and a truly impressive cover, painted by the singer of the band

After a break of more than a decade and two solo releases from Daniel Denis, Univers Zero have risen again, this time under the total command of Daniel Denis. The last album, Heatwave (1987), was so gorgeous that it was something of a…

The Slovenian prog scene has been really weak lately. Sure, there are a few bands giving it a go, but it's mostly pretty barren, and one of the rare exceptions is Miusow Quartet, who have now been joined by the lads from Tolmin, Feedback

England's art rock masters Magnum carried on, in many ways, the musical direction of their splendid debut "Kingdom Of Madness" (1978) with their second album, blandly titled "Magnum II". Even though it's

Cult American metallers Metal Church keep their musical stampede rolling with "This Present Wasteland", a run that has kept up its full-throttle pace since the original lineup reunited in 1999. With decent new albums that

The legendary prog rock trio, the purest embodiment of everything good and bad about progressive rock, was already

Charing Cross? The name sounds new, but there's a longer story behind it than you'd think. The band's roots go back to the late eighties. With the lineup hit by extreme instability, its mission couldn't fully take off until

The pride of the Slovenian rock scene, which, in case you didn't know, goes by the name Šank rock, celebrated the 25th anniversary of its existence in its hometown of Velenje in December 2007. Definitely an enviable achievement,

This is one of the best albums Uriah Heep have ever put out, and next to their older catalog it can comfortably stand shoulder to shoulder with "Demons And Wizards" (1972), "The Magician's Birthday" (1972) or "Firefly" (1977).

After the excellent out-of-the-ordinary "Sea Of Light", Uriah Heep charged their batteries to the max. "Sonic Origami" brings a lovely bundle of mellow tracks boasting a ton of ornamental prog/art rock keyboard arrangements, so compared to…

This is the only Uriah Heep live recording to come out in the nineties with official-release status. It was captured in the last third of June way back in 1994 in Cologne (Germany), smack in the middle of that final worldwide Pink Floyd…

The raw energy of the Boston outfit that had almost casually packed stadiums across the pond in the 1970s was, in the eyes of the average mid-'80s rocker, nothing but a pale memory of long-gone ti

In the liner notes to the album, Lou Reed wrote that all 58 minutes of music on the record should be heard in one go, from start to finish, and taken in as if it were a book or a film. Very fitting advice, since Reed is known as one of the

After the exceptional music Mike Oldfield managed to create with QE 2, new challenges were waiting for Mike. And the new challenge arrived just a year later, in the form of the album Five Miles Out. For this record, Mike Oldfield wanted to…

"Dream And Deliver" is the third studio album from German outfit Dreamtide. Before it, the guys released their studio debut in 2001, titled "Here Comes The Flood", followed in 2003 by the album "Dreams For T

The new Opeth album is probably one of the most anticipated releases of 2008. Especially given the band's evolution, which follows the big strides they fearlessly take as they change their musical expression from album to

Looks like interest in Black metal is really spreading all over the world. This extreme genre is usually tied to Scandinavia, but this time we're dealing with a slightly more exotic country, namely Singapore, the cradle of the band

Odin's Court are an intriguing prog-rock outfit from the US (Maryland) and a real magnet for anyone put off by the endless textbook display of muscle flexing and extending, under which whole forests of paper

Apparently the new wave of top-tier Scandinavian bands playing easy-to-love progressive metal is nowhere near slowing down. Here's the debut from Swedish outfit Silent Call. And if I throw out names like Platitude or Seventh Wonder,…

The French death metal / grindcore band Benighted has been active, with more or less success, for ten years. But they definitely got the most attention with their fifth studio album Icon (Infinite Conscience Of Nothingness), which came out…

Richie Kotzen, the 38-year-old guitar hero who put out his "intricately" titled debut "Richie Kotzen" at just 19, is known as an outstanding musical talent. He has one of those rare gifts that

British lyricist Keith Reid co-founded Procol Harum with Gary Brooker in 1967. Together they cranked out a pile of hits, A Whiter Shade Of Pale being the one everybody knows. Reid was the guy writing the brilliant lyrics, and he didn't play…

Locanda delle Fate is yet another of those Italian bands known for just one album. The seventies in Italy were full of bands like that, but not many of them managed to put out a gem like this, one that's still a favorite among fans

After their greatest masterpiece, "Out Of The Blue" (1977), it was a tough, honestly almost impossible job for Electric Light Orchestra to make another album that ambitious and influential. After wrapping up the mega-successful tour