Detailed Reviews [Apryl - 2002 - "Alorconfusa"]

Preamble. I have never heard of Apryl before, so I am not in the know whether "Alorconfusa" is their debut album or not.

The Album. There will be some objective similarities between this review and that of The Far Side's debut album, > "Parallelebiped", which I wrote yesterday. "Alorconfusa" features four epic tracks, three of which are songs. These are Hesperia, Tarta-ruga, and Nelle Vesti di Adia (1, 3, & 4). Overall, the music that is presented on each of them represents quite a complex and diverse Classic Symphonic Art-Rock, the roots of which are certainly in the 1970s. This is mostly a keyboard-driven music, and solos of the Hammond organ and synthesizer and passages of piano are 'at the head' of arrangements much more often than those of guitar and bass. Regardless of all of this however, and despite the fact that there are lots of the band's own original ideas on each of the songs on the album, the traces of influences of the most influential Art-Rock band, Genesis, are notable here as well. Which, though, doesn't diminish the overall value of them. Especially since purely instrumental arrangements cover more than a half of each of them, and all the vocals are here not only original, but are also of a romantic rather than dramatic character. (Quite the contrary, the vocals on The Far Side's "Parallelebiped", where there are traces of the influences of Rush, are of a dramatic rather than romantic nature. Those in the know should certainly understand what seeming contradictions I am implying here.) Quite unexpectedly, it turned out that the instrumental composition, Ghe-pardo (2), which is highly original in its entirety, is about an atmospherically symphonic Space Rock with elements of Classic Symphonic Art-Rock and Prog-Metal. To say more precisely, Ghe-pardo consists of two parts. The first of them, which is of a spacey 'origin', lasts about six and a half minutes, while at the end of the track the music suddenly transforms into a blend of Classic Art-Rock and Prog-Metal.

Summary. First, I was a bit discouraged about the stylistic inconsistency between all three of the songs and the only instrumental composition on the album, which, in addition, is located on the second track of it. Later however, I began to understand that in this very case, "second track" is by no means "second-hand" and not only. In fact, the instrumental piece, Ghe-pardo is hardly less inventive and effective than its 'vocal' counterparts on the album, which, thus, is very interesting as a whole. Highly recommended.

VM: February 11, 2003