L'ARAIGNÉE-MAL

This is not an easy album to get into. I quite liked their debut album, and this one is a bit "short" in terms of meeting my expectations. To my taste, there are not sufficient symphonic moments here.

It starts with "Le Photographe Exorciste". A good song overall, fully Crimsonesque (but not the early and symphonic Crimson) for most of it and only featuring symphonic breaks during too short moments. When I listened to "Gazotte N°1", I could only think of one influence : Mc Laughlin (which is definitely not a fave of mine). It is a dull jazz improvisation. I just can't stand it (not to speak about the over-extended live version available on the remastered edition).

Things will get better with "Le Voleur D' Extase" although the jazz influence (and I can't think of no better than the Mahavishnu one - and I 'm glad that I am not the only one to think so). Production is rather poor I must say.

So, basically this album is a "one epic" one. A great song, indeed which is waaaay better than anything else you could find on this record. It fully reconciliates me with the band. Finally a symphonic song. Gone is the cacophony of "Gazotte". We are plunged into beautiful melodies, great music : peaceful at times and wild at others (but never noisy). The vocals are also rather performant.

And what to say about some fabulous guitar breaks ? Just wonderful. There will also be some complex keys passages. At the end of the day, this song is truely one that should please any prohead. It is not 100 % symphonic oriented but still : it is a great piece of music, without doubt. Crazy and wild finale with a devastating violin solo as well.

Still, I have some problems to rate this album. While I would rate the title track with five stars, "Gazotte" is really not worth more than one on my evaluation scale. For the time being, it will be three stars.