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Wow ! How I was blown away when I
heard this album for the very first time. French vocals within a
prog context are never easy to digest as I think the language is
more suitable for the singer-songwriter genre better known as
‘chanson’. Instead Nemo delivers a wonderful form of prog as if
Ange, Taal and early Dream Theater are all mixed together. The band
most certainly doesn’t try to copy any of those bands as the
endresult clearly becomes an original Nemo sound all over. Whilst
the guitarparts will lean more towards a heavy approach it’s mainly
the keyboards which add the necessary symphonic structure to it all
adding soft touches of strings and piano as time evolves. Also from
a productional point of view a lot of effort has gone into unfolding
detail after detail. Listen to the acoustic part during ‘La dernière
vague’ where the drummer suddenly switches to a softer style of
drumming in order to blend perfectly with the atmosphere. Again the
synthparts are more prog inclined whereas the distorted guitar
delivers riff after riff of authentic rock. The great bassplaying is
given plenty of room during the powerful, aggressive ‘Générateur’
which suddenly sounds like contemporary Bach.
With ‘Sur la tombe du Phoenix’ the
band proves to be much more than your average progrock outfit as
they flirt with jazzy elements also adding percussive textures and
dramatic changes which is where the Taal influences come from.
During ‘L’oeil du cyclope’ the splendid acoustic guitar blends with
the classical piano almost sounding like the California Guitar Trio
whilst once again a fair amount of fusion enters the world of Nemo.
The acoustic percussion in ‘La mort du scorpion’ let’s the shadow of
Isildur’s Bane enter making way for yet another spectacular heavy
solo by guitarist JP Louveton as if two different musical worlds
collide. With ‘Cavalerie’ Nemo delivers yet another slice of heavy
jazzy material sporting once again some tasty fusion-like guitar
backed by outstanding classical piano like two opposites who get
together. The nice thing about the music of Nemo is that they are
professional enough to know that they have to alternate heavy parts
with softer passages. That’s why several acoustic pieces turn up
such as the laidback ‘Désolation’ which by means of some more
distorted electric guitar suddenly changes towards yet another
uptempo part which also contains some weird time signatures and odd
drum patterns.
Right at the very end of this album
there’s also a ghost track and what a great piece this is. Here Nemo
attacks none other than Dream Theater’s ‘Glass prison’ yet in
authentic ‘beatbox’ style ! So expect a pure a capella beatbox
version of this progmetal classic in a way you can find this kind of
approach in the hiphop scene with youngsters delivering this kind of
‘music’ on streetcorners. No doubt an inventive way to deliver prog
without one single instrument except for the voice. So humour and
prog do combine very well if only you are original enough yourself
which Nemo most certainly is ! Based on the legacy of Jules Verne
I’m convinced good old Jules can be very proud of what Nemo has
done. And with the current media campaigns concerning the Disney
movie “Finding Nemo” the band should most certainly benefit from the
publicity. And if you take the title “Finding Nemo” literally I
would say the search is over as the only Nemo worth looking for can
be found in your recordstore as from now ! |
