Detailed Reviews [Anekdoten - 1995 - "Nucleus"]

Prologue. Yesterday, along with several new CD releases by Musea, I've also received from Bernard Gueffier, the manager of Musea Records, a few of those CDs that I wanted to listen to and review. These are: Runaway Totem's "Andromeda", "Childhood's End" by Tempano, "Triskellion" by North Star, and the hero of this review, the second Anekdoten CD "Nucleus", which is also the only of these albums that I've heard before. (Next week, I'll continue working with the aforementioned albums and begin reviewing the new CD releases by Musea as well.)

The Album. Certainly, most of you know that "Nucleus" is the second Anekdoten album. To read the review on their third album, "From Within", click here. I am well acquainted with the creation of the excellent Swedish band Anekdoten as well. So, I've just listened to "Nucleus", which I heard for the last time about five years ago. I must say that I am once again very pleased with the heaviest Anekdoten ProGduction, despite the fact that there are enough of the traces that remind me of King Crimson circa 1974 on this album. However, all four of the songs where these traces are really evident, namely Nucleus, Harvest, Rubankh, and This Far From the Sky (1, 2, 5, & 7), feature a lot of the band's own ideas as well. (Certainly, the fourth track Raft is actually just an intro to Rubankh.) All the heavy parts of these songs are, in fact, much heavier than those in King Crimson and are the representatives of a progressive Doom-Metal rather than harsh Art-Rock. As for the remaining three songs: Book of Hours, Here, & In Freedom (3, 6, & 8), all of which are about Classic Symphonic Art-Rock, only the first of them, in my view, has a slight resemblance to the music of Crimson.

Summary. After I heard "From Within", I began regarding it as the band's best effort. Which was mainly due to this being their most original album to date, which, unlike "Vemod" and "Nucleus", is free (at least almost free) of King Crimson's influences. Later however, I found "From Within" more accessible than any of the previous albums by the band. Meanwhile "Nucleus" has just returned to its status as being my favorite Anekdoten album.

VM. August 8, 2002