If you see the name of the late Jaco Pastorius creep up in the thanks column then you can bet your life that this band knows what its talking about. Another great find by the Dutch Bee & Bee records label, this band might slightly resemble Anomaly with the main difference that this music contains vocals. Imagine Attention Deficit with a Red Hot Chili Pepper attitude and you're nearly there. Opener "Denial Trademark" contains enough influences to be able to go on holiday for the rest of your lives. Obviously the Dream Theater licks are there, but there's also fusion, Echolyn, and Gentle Giant to be found here. Imagine my surprise when pure jazz piano suddenly mingles with hard-etched guitar riffs, before Jasper's fine sounding organ entertains us once again. Also enjoy the nice melodic vocal parts here. The vocal lines in "Freeze" to me sound like a cross between Jadis, Summer Indoors and … Level 42. Strange combination, I know, but listen for yourself and you'll agree. However from a musical point of view there's a powerful hard swing part which finds its way through the wilderness of guitar solos and keyboard backdrops. "Clouds Of Oblivion" took a half a year in the making, which is no surprise once you get to analyze this little beauty. In certain parts Jeroen's voice gets close to that of ex-For Absent Friends singer Alex Toonen. Organ and guitar follow the same scales backed by some powerful drumming when interesting synths and Petrucci like guitar pyrotechnics creep in. Suddenly Hendrik Jan de Jong introduces some flamenco style acoustic guitar to steer the song into a completely different direction, before the calm is once again interrupted by fierce drumming and loud guitar riffs. To me the biggest surprise of all is when the song comes to an end, resulting in some outstanding blues with a great guitar solo backed by thrilling organ. Solitary jazzy piano opens "So Greedy," whilst the melody seems to contain the kind of "catchy" elements thathave made bands like Kayak and Focus immortal. Once again this "kind" sidestep is put aside in favour of a royal dose of metal licks backed by a lush Arabic sounding orchestration. From a distance this sounds like Led Zeppelin only ten times as hard before it changes towards a more uptempo structure once again incorporating loads of breaks. I have now listened to Beyond Redemption at least ten times, and time after time I detect new sounds, new details in the complex arrangements. Other than pure instrumental music, the inclusion of Jeroen Kriek gives this music an extra dimension, a dimension which could well project these flying Dutchmen into another galaxy! Reviewed by: John 'Bobo' Bollenberg |
