SCYTHE |
| Scythe's
first album, Each Other, features nothing like neoprog; finally
and fortunately there are bands who go their own ways! what we hear
on the 43 min (which is quite an impressive lenght for a self-produced
demo that the band was forced to do within only 3 days as the cover
tells us) is a brave mixture of old-fashioned prog-sounds and new stuff;
there are melodies AND uneven times AT ONCE! it is rare to find something
so rhythmically and harmonically crooked sound so self-evidently right!
go and get it! The opener, "Eruption: The Arrow's Point", is very much what you would call a rocker if there were not all those strange times and sounds. But still, fine prog, uptempo, great keyboard work, hardrock guitar. "Am I Really Here?" would not be too surprising a song to be found on an old Marillion album (with respect to the feel), but features a lot more time and tempo changes. Example: The verse goes through a 7/8 - 8/8 - 7/8 - 9/8 -10/8 scheme. No, it does not sound disjointed or overly complicated. Thomas Thielen is at his most intense at this song, reminding me of Bono and Fish. The lyrics are extraordinarily imaginative and suite the complexity of the composition well. Many mood changes! "Faded" is a little refuge for the not-so-die-hard proggies. Featuring only Martin Walter on drums and Ingo Roden on bass, the duet shows easily how much sound can come out of these instruments alone! "Discussed" is the most depressing, dark part of the album. The intro has a slight "San Jacinto"-feel, but after 2 min emerges into Crimson or Yes-like keyboard-work that is simply awesome. Gerhards shows that he is one of the great players. The piano and the mellotron choirs give me shivers again and again when I listen to the harsh and weird parts in the middle. "Elegy" is an interlude by guitar and keyboards. Al di Meola in his calm moments would be a good comparison. Beautiful melody. "One Step Further" now is the magnum opus of the album. 14.15 min full of diverse versality. They even do something like 10 seconds of hard polka in the middle! It would take too long to describe all the parts, but they vary a lot, I assure you, and they never segue into what you would expect, yet into what sounds natural to come anyway. I know, this is paradox, but that's the way it is! The last track "Episige: Where we are" again is an instrumental. Fripp-like guitar sounds and a piano. Oh yes, and your own fear. That s all. Either you hate it or you love it. I love it. King Crimson would be proud of that one. EACH OTHER is one of the big albums of our times. It is a pity that only few people will recognize as the band is not signed yet (!!!). I have rarely heard such a combination of playfulness, versality, mature compositions and arrangements, and atmosphere. (as it is a self-produced demo, I have to mention that the sound is rather mediocer, but under the given circumstances the best possible, of course) Website : http://www.rzuser.uni-heidelberg.de/~ugerhard/scythe Review by christoph mahlmann |