Short Reviews [Walfad - 2014 - "An Unsung Hero, Salty Rains & Him"] ProgressoR

Just a year on from their debut, and Polish band Walfad (We Are Looking For A Drummer) were back in the studio. They had dropped to a quartet after ‘Ab Ovo’, with Wojciech Ciuraj now being the sole guitarist. This now allowed their music to open up, with far more space within it, as there are times when he allows himself to concentrate on the singing and not provide any guitar at all. This means that there is a lot of space within the sound, with some luxurious bass lines often taking the lead melodic role with keyboards providing a background to be played against. It took me a while to think what band they reminded me of, but finally it clicked that in many ways they are following a very similar path to Credo after Mike Varty had joined the band. Credo had yet to morph into the huge sounding outfit they were to become, and in many ways this album contains the same amount of naivety, and is all the better for it. All the vocals are in English, yet the booklet contains all lyrics in both Polish and English, as are the song titles, which makes me wonder if there has been a Polish language version as well, as I have come across that previously with other bands. Millenium’s keyboard player Ryszard Kramarski was on hand to assist with the production, and the result is a very clean sounding album. The second song, “Leaves”, is broken into four sections but it is only possible to play this as a single song on the CD, and at more than eighteen minutes long shows that the young band have a great deal of confidence. The album is laid-back for the most part, and is solid and enjoyable neo-prog.