CRUCIS

Crucis' debut is a tense affair that doesn't settle for obvious moods or time signatures, preferring to haunt lots of augmented chords and intentionally mislead the listener with false resolutions and melody paths that choose to take the fork. This should sound promising, but around half of the songs here fail to satisfy exactly because of the band's fickle approach to songwriting (akin to that of a bricklayer's approach to baking a cake) leaves much to be desired in terms of closure - most songs on the album end abruptly, including the closer, "Recluso Artista"! The second track, "Mes", attempts to have a closing passage, but it's so sudden that it can't help but feel forced.

Some of the tracks have negligible to nil vocals, which doesn't help the listener to distinguish between the parts that have been sandwiched together so haphazardly. Of course, the musical ideas themselves are competent and often great fun, often little puzzles in and of themselves. This is a problem shared by (or perhaps contracted hereditarily from) Camel, another band who outstandingly failed to support their fragile ideas with a sturdy skeleton of compositional know-how. "Crucis" has a very high score which can be misleading to newcomers - anything over two stars seems unwarranted, unless you really, really like songs that seem drawn from alphabet soup, splashed onto a score and shuffled.