THINGS TO COME...

This wild Texan quartet is one of the pleasant surprises of the new millennium and so far from two albums only, they managed to raise a few eyebrows in the prog world. While the artwork of Things To Come is a bit misleading (we are far away from the usual spacey prog, there is a cosmic feel to it), somehow it does it no disservice either. Notice the rotten human skull on the lower left corner.

The classic prog quartet plays an instrumental Zeuhl, that can remind what a few newer Cuneiform label groups are doing: I am thinking of Nebelnest or later Djam Karet or even the later Guapo (but without the post rock), but there is a rough, raw and unrefined feel that makes it veer to some RIO intonations: Present comes to mind here. Four tracks only, but all over the 9-minute-mark, the group develops a wild mix of semi-Zeuhl music (from Magma to Univers Zero are obvious historical influences here) to more conventional groups like Crimson. Yeti never lets up throughout the 46 minutes of this album, even if there is a much quieter passage in Go Like This.

This album gives me a small dilemma: while not essential (far from it), I like it enough to give its fourth star, but cannot bring myself to recommend this album, but to confirmed fans of the genre. Hence I will stick to the 3,5 stars.