Short Reviews [Millenium - 2022 - "Tales from Imaginary Movies"]

I am very fortunate in that I have heard a great deal of Millenium over the years, and see I have 12 of their releases on my shelves. For the vast majority of their history their singer was Lukasz "Gall" Galeziowsk, but he left after their 2017 album ’44 Minutes’ and was replaced by Marek Smelkowski for "MMXVIII", which prior to this was the last album I have heard. I am not sure what happened then, as Lukasz returned to sing on a Millenium album in both 2019 and 2020, Marek sang on another Milennium album in 2020, before come to this 2022 release which features a new singer in David Lewandowski. At least the rest of the line-up was stable, with Piotr Plonka (electric & acoustic guitars), Krzysztof Wyrwa (bass), Grzegorz Bauer (drums & percussion) and Ryszard Kramarski (keyboards, acoustic guitars). Poland has long been a hotbed of progressive music, with Millenium being at the forefront since Ryszard formed the band more than 20 years ago. Unlike many prog acts, who no longer release many albums ( I am not going to name any, but there are plenty out there), Millenium have been wonderfully consistent both in their output and their very high quality. David has very clear unaccented vocals, and if one was listening to this without knowing who it was then one would probably guess this was a British band, and definitely not one from Eastern Europe. Grzegorz and Krzysztof can always be relied upon to provide a strong foundation, Ryszard switches between banks of sounds and lead melodies, while Piotr is obviously a metalhead at heart and provides plenty of crunch and dynamic solos, showing there is life in the neo prog genre yet. There are times when they can be quite Floydian, but his guitar always takes them in a quite different direction and right from the introduction of the title track one feels we are being taken on a symphonic bombastic journey with very powerful production as the keyboards lift and the guitars shine. Highly melodic and inventive, this is yet again an album where the listener is brought inside from the very first play and finds a great deal to enjoy. Another wonderful addition to the collection – 17 albums to date and plenty more to come.