Sometimes, if you listen to a record in a shop, you only listen to a few pieces and often you only get to hear the first 4, 5 songs. In case of Arilyn, you would get a totally wrong impression. This is a CD that should have carried the title “Get more progressive in 13 tracks”. Each song is more prog and more symphonic then the previous.
All the songs are beautifully sung by Christian Külbs, whose voice resembles from time to time to Midge Ure. The band is from Germany, but his English is quite good.

After a short introductory track “Alpha”, which has a very promising symphonic sound, the sound suddenly changes to track two “New World”, a simple poprock song that even brings back memories of “You” by the Belgian band Scooter. Only the voice of bass player Christian Külbs gives a hint to what may and will come on the rest of the album.
”Far Away” starts with a subtle guitar tune carried on the waves of an organ, but the rest of the song is again too simple to appeal to progressive rock fans.
”Foreign Shores” even obtains a good keyboard solo, followed by a splendid guitar solo. Slowly the progressive sound crawls into the songs. The length of the songs is also directly proportional to the progressive content, so the farther down the tracks, the longer and the better they get.
From track 7 “The State Of Desperation” on, this album is really getting better. This song about getting desperate enough to commit suicide switches from a ballad to a more rhythmic chorus. There are some superb backing vocals by Kathrin Sobetzko. The desperation is accentuated by the use of distortion on the vocals. The song ends with the suicide, although the gun shot sounds rather weak. The voice of Christian sounds like Marc Almond in the lower parts and like Midge Ure in the higher regions.

“Return” is all about returning in time and changing your life. The song sounds like Ultravox, mostly due to the vocals. The solo with the strings and the guitar is a real symphonic piece.
”Rescue Me” lasts almost 8 minutes. It contains a well played synth solo with a lot of tremolo in the sound. There’s a lot of variation and again the vocals are superb. The last minute is a spacey piece on the keyboards, as the song is all about the loneliness of some one who’s out in space.
“Reach You” is the best track on the album. I can hardly believe that the two parts are sung by the same man, but there’s only one man in the booklet with “vocals” behind his name and it’s Christian. The solos get longer and longer and better, this time the guitar plays the main part.
The next song “Mindeater” is heavier with a bit distortion on the guitar and a Hammond organ. This song would fit well on a single and will have a lot of appreciation when it’s played live.
The final and title track is a ballad which features Kathrin on backing vocals again. Her voice deserves to sing lead vocals on a track. Also some real strings by Christian Herzberger come joining in to make the symphonic sound complete.

Arilyn is a very promising band. If they continue in the style of the first half of the album, I wish them all the luck, but I’m afraid they will no longer fit in our style of music. If they choose for the progressive part, we have another band to watch out for.

Reviewed by Danny 'Camil' Focke

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Last updated: 03 september 2003 .
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