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The more I get to use the internet the
more I see it as the big saviour for our beloved genre of music. As
long as there was vinyl a band could produce an album in small
quantities for it’s own territory but it was very rare that such an
album would be sold outside that territory. Due to the size of a CD
plus the world-wide promotion and distribution by means of internet
every single autoproduction can be purchased whenever and wherever
you are. Since the internet a lot of South-American bands have
really exploded onto the market. Helped by specialised labels they
were finally ready to make their mark when compared to the more
international sound of English spoken bands. Take Mexican band Cast
who existed almost for twenty years before they released their first
album soon to be followed by lots of releases in a very short space
of time.
In the wake of South-American
progressive rock comes the Brazilian band Apocalypse who certainly
in their native Brazil are a well known band in prog circles.
Featuring the brothers Fritsch (Ruy on guitar and Eloy on keyboards)
the opening track on this new album has a bit of early Marillion but
from the second song ‘Cachoeria das Aguas Douradas’ onwards again
the southern playful charm mingles with the pure symphonic texture.
It’s mainly the keyboards which deliver wonderful melodic parts. For
my own taste I find the guitarsound too metallic as opposed to the
softer sound of the keyboards which suit the music better. At times
one would expect to hear some flute but everything you hear on this
album has been composed and recorded by the four members of the band
without including any guests. That way of course a similar sound can
be executed when Apocalypse performs live. Luckily the instrumental
part of the Apocalypse coin sounds OK but the vocal department is
once again one of the weaker points resulting in a not too
convincing album. I guess this will always remain one of the
difficult points for these bands as long as they decide to sing in
their native tongue. I guess that some of the pronunciations simply
don’t work with prog. On an instrumental level of course it’s nice
to still detect the country’s influences but from a vocal point of
view it mostly works against the bands. A way to mask this is to
include instrumental tracks as well. Here Apocalypse does exactly
that by delivering ‘Toccata’, a fast and furious work which once
again headlines Eloy Fritsch.
One of the weakest songs certainly has
to be ‘Progjazz’ which is more like a demo from a keyboard
manufacturer than anything else. The drums here sound awful and
uninspired although it concerns ‘jazz’ so the options should be
countless. ‘Lembranças eternas’ has such a false ring about it it
hurts. As always Eloy comes to the rescue with over the top
synthsolo’s but the damage is too big to recover it completely.
Because Eloy Fritsch has also released some solo albums in the past
I sometimes have my doubt whether at all he wants to be part of
Apocalypse or whether he’d rather be completely on his own. When I
listen to the superb ‘III Milenio’ I think I know the answer !
This
release is enhanced with two further live tracks as recorded in the
US. Again Eloy illustrates his love for Rick Wakeman especially
during the Moog solo’s. The American audience loves it to bits but
then again few US bands deliver similar music. All in all this band
has a lot of positive elements within it’s music but if I make the
balance I come to the conclusion that most of it is the work from
one guy : Eloy Fritsch. The rest of the band certainly doesn’t have
his abilities and therefor the quality of Apocalypse as a band is
far inferior than the solo capacities of Eloy. However as long as
they enjoy themselves and as long as there’s an audience who likes
them then who am I to judge this band ? |
