Short Reviews [Light Damage - 2014 - "Light Damage"]

This 2015 album was the debut release from Luxembourg-based neo progressive band Light Damage. That isn’t a country I have ever thought of as a hotbed of the scene, but these guys all know what they are doing, having previously performed as a Pink Floyd tribute called Brain Damage before moving onto their own material. They actually started back in 2005 when Seb (drums) and Stephane (guitars) met at a festival, and then started putting the band together soon afterwards. Seb left after the release of their first demo, ‘Acronym’, and the line-up settled down to Frederik Hardy (bass, bass pedals, backing vocals), Nicholas-John (lead vocals, guitars, e-bow), Sebastien Perignon (keyboards, percussion and tubular bells), Stephane Lecocq (lead guitars) and Thibaut Grappin (drums, percussion). They took a year off from gigs to work on new material and re-arranging old songs and self-released this album before it was picked up by PPR. Musically they have been paying close attention to Guy Manning, and have then taken this with more neo influences to create something which feels very rooted in the Nineties, and to someone like me who was very involved with the scene back then, it is a very welcome sound indeed. It is a very British sound, and they play with a broad palette, and ‘Meddle’-era Floyd touches here and there. One of the delights is there are many layers, so there is more to discover with each unpeeling of the onion as the listener gets more inside the music and what the band are trying to achieve. The album tells the story of a person who loses a loved one, while the cover itself is a representation of the story as it is an old piece of fabric which has been torn apart by years and damaged by different manipulations it ugly and belongs in the garbage, or is it beautiful? Powerful and gripping, this is a superb debut album which any fans of the sub-genre would do well to investigate.