TIME VOYAGER

The last album I heard from this Italian outfit was 2017's excellent 'Detachment', at which time the core quartet brought in three singers to help out. However, by the time of the next album, 2019's 'Seven Seas' they had brought in one of those singers, Alex Mari, firmly into the fold and now the quintet is back with the next. The rest of the band is still Luca Zabinni (keyboards, backing vocals, acoustic guitars), Eric Ombelli (drums), Marco Mazzuoccolo (electric guitars) and Francesco Caliendo (bass), so there is real continuity in the line-up.

I am pretty sure if I played this to a proghead and they did not know the country of origin they would never pick Italy, as what we have here is a band who are bringing in multiple elements of the American AOR scene with more in common with the likes of Timothy Pure than the classic RPI outfits we all know so well. Now, that is a style of music I have long enjoyed, but while this is pleasant there is always the feeling that it has been somewhat over sanitised, and the feeling of rock has been somewhat lost. It does not exactly feel like prog by numbers but there is no doubt there is little soul and emotion within. It is all very clever, but it somewhat washes over the listener and leaves them somewhat underwhelmed. I checked out the 2017 album as so many of my friends were raving over it, and they were right, but there has been silence around this one and I can somewhat understand why. I keep reading rave reviews so I am obviously missing something, but it would be boring if everyone like the same thing.

That this is a clever album with some fine musicianship and vocals is never in doubt, but there is nothing memorable contained within and there are plenty of albums I would return to ahead of this one. If you enjoy this pleasant mainstream style of prog with plenty of hints towards American AOR then this may well be for you, but somehow this does not quite work for me.