Detailed Reviews [Colt - 2002 - "From the Fridge"]

Preamble. "From the Fridge" is the debut album by the Polish band Colt and the 11th CD release by the label, Wydawnictwo-21 (i.e. Publishing House-21). Apart from the band's original material, the CD also includes the song: I Want Your Love So Bad, which is a cover of Atomic Rooster's SLY.

The Album. Metal, including Prog-Metal, rules currently everywhere, so I haven't listened to a real Classic Hard Rock, which, by the way :-), is presented on Colt's "From the Fridge" album, for a long time already. But while the roots of this music are undoubtedly in the beginning of the 1970s, it sounds not only highly original and fresh, but also in many ways progressive. To be more precise, only four songs on the album: Time to Fly, So Hard, Doesn't Matter, and the cover of Atomic Rooster's SLY, I Want Your Love So Bad (2, 5, 6, & 7), are about an accessible, proto-progressive, Hard Rock. Which, though, doesn't diminish a value of the album as a whole at all. While not masterpieces, all four of the said songs are excellent and sound as honest and inflammatory as everything here. All five of the other tracks are definitely progressive. Three of them are songs: Chosen One, Z wielkich walk, and the album's title track (1, 3, & 9), and two - instrumental compositions: Boozies, and Drop (4 & 8). The latter track consists of constantly developing passages, solos, and rhythms of acoustic guitar and is a real gem. The song, Z wielkich walk (3), and the first instrumental piece on the album, Boozies, are masterpieces of a progressive Hard Rock, though stylistically, they actually represent a fusion of Hard Rock and Symphonic Art-Rock. The alternation of heavy and symphonic textures, the latter of which consist of highly inventive and always diverse interplay between solos of bass guitar and those of Hammond and flute, are typical for both of them. The drumming is intensive and, at the same time, very diverse throughout the album. The music on both of the album's opening and closing tracks: Chosen One and From the Fridge, represents just a real Progressive Rock, which is highly diverse, very tasty, and quite complex - regardless of whether there are soft and symphonic arrangements at the moment or harsh and hard-edged ones. Each of these two songs contains a lot of different themes and features most of the essential progressive features: such as complex stop-to-play movements performed with the use of the odd meters, frequent changes of musical direction, tempo, and mood, etc. By the way, most of the arrangements that are done on the album in the vein of Symphonic Art-Rock are of a clearly dramatic character. With the exception of Z wielkich walk (3), all the vocals on "From the Fridge" are in English and are OK at all points, though there are only a few of the vocal parts on each of the best three songs on the album. Should I say that any of the two instrumental compositions on it doesn't feature any vocals? It's done, though, though I realize that it sounds incredibly stupid.

Summary. Although everything sounds fresh on "From the Fridge", and even the solos of flute don't remind me of those by Ian Anderson (at all), I think that some relative comparisons between the music of Colt and that on such a Rocky album of Jethro Tull as "Aqualung" are possible. In any case, those who miss a honest and very impressive sound of classic progressive Hard Rock of the 1970s shouldn't miss this wonderful opportunity to experience *those* wonderful impressions (can you remember?) again.

VM: January 24, 2003