Progwereld Album Review
“Friends, I dare to admit that a lot of the music that is being thrown on the market under the name “Prog” these days, leaves me rather Siberian. Been there, done that, I do have the T-shirt in the closet but I will never wear it again. And every now and then you discover a record that makes you gasp for breath again. “Multiple Personalities” is one such record.
You can't tell by the cover, it scores quite high in the category "Nice that your sister can paint, but has she ever thought about lenses?" Hideous aliens in the kind of landscape Bob Ross used to paint more blissfully when he was skewed by the mushrooms. Not quite my taste, shall I say.
According to the information on Bandcamp, where you can order the CD, “Multiple Personalities”, which the Los Angeles band has been working on for ten years, is a concept album. But it is not clear anywhere what the concept is exactly. Given the title and song 5, it must be about multiple personality disorder. After all, on the cover you see, if you dare to look, all people with multiple faces, but with instrumental music I find that a bit of a hassle.
The music there and against is out of this world, so good! Imagine: three guys, with a six-string fretless bass guitar, a seven-string guitar, a trumpet and a big drum set. All three are really impossibly good on their instruments, giving you the pleasant feeling that they're not even playing their tops. It also all sounds very controlled, namely.
This is partly due to the sound that guitarist Reicher chooses. With a power trio in this genre you expect Joe Satriani and John Petrucci, that tearing sound. But Reicher opts for a quicksilver, clear sound that reminded me most of Allan Holdsworth at the time of his brilliant LP “Road Games”. Yes, this tape is that good. In the solos Reicher does pick up a nice tearing sound, but as a rhythm guitarist and (frequent) string tapper his instrument sounds like a clear carillon.
Because of that sound, in combination with Elliott's fretless bass guitar, the music sounds wonderfully open, so that you can also listen to the busiest passages much better. And busy, the men sometimes are. Just listen to Oceania , in which jazz, funk, hard rock and reggae alternate at a killer pace. But it still sounds fresh, because of the beautiful choice of sound and the open production.
Honorable mention by the way for drummer Prado, who plays beautiful drums, generally serves the band sound, but also takes his moment here and there, like in MPD . With a touch of synthesizer here and there and the aforementioned trumpet, the sound is complete. When you use that power for such powerful compositions, think of the Steve Morse Band without the blues and Rush without the distortion, you get an impression of the pleasure with which I listen to this wonderful album over and over again. And that's not even mentioning Elliott's bass solos. Beautiful, beautiful.
The year is not over yet, but this one is in my top 3. With such records we will keep the Prog fresh for a few more years. Do yourself a favor and watch the Youtube video. You're welcome!”
- Erik Groeneweg at Progwereld
(Google Translated from Dutch)
See the original link below:
https://www.progwereld.org/recensie/coevality-multiple-personalities/
