UTOPIA PERFECTION

Utopia Perfection is the debut album from Finland´s Discordia. A true eclectic prog rock band. This was a chance buy for me as I had never heard of the band before.

The music is as mentioned very eclectic drawing influences from many genres. I hear both pop, metal, symphonic prog, heavy prog, rock and jazz in their music. The most dominant feature in Discordia´s music is the use of both a male and a female vocalist. I don´t know much about finish names but I assume that Riikka Hänninen is a female and Tero Väänänen is a male ? The two vocalists compliment each other very well and the music is rather memorable and melodic. I know this sounds weird but I can´t help thinking about B-52s when I listen to Discordia. Maybe that´s just me, but there is an undenyable feel good vibe in Discordia´s music that is also very present in the music from B-52s and Tero Väänänen has a similar voice to that of Fred Schneider. I´ll have to mention here that the female vocals from Riikka Hänninen does not remind me of Cindy Wilson and Kate Pierson. She is more in the vein of Kate Bush ( not as talented of course but still good).

The music is enhanced by the use of keyboards, violin and bass clarinet in addtion to drums, guitar and bass and the melodic approach is generally very enjoyable.

The musicianship is good and the production is professional and clean.

Utopia Perfection is a good eclectic progressive rock album and if you enjoy great interplay between female and male vocals this will be a treat. It fails to reach excellent in my book though and for me this is a 3 star album. This is the kind of album I´ll listen to on occasion and then forget about until I someday see it on my shelf. That doesn´t mean that it isn´t good, this is just the kind of music that I don´t listen to very often.