SUFFOCATING THE BLOOM

In early-90's Echolyn were not only discouraged by the faint image of Progressive Rock music but they also were chasing a good contract with a major record label, thus they moved on with the recordings of an even more ambitious-sounding album in 1992.This unusual five-piece American line-up with the two bassists released the sophomore work ''Suffocating the bloom'' again on Bridge Records with the hope to approach a decent contract.

Talking about ambition, Echolyn offer in this album 10 short tracks along with a monster 28-min. epic composition entitled ''A Suite for the Everyman'', divided into 11 parts.Musically the band did not change the complicated style of their debut at all.The music remains an extreme amalgam of sweet vocal harmonies and bombastic, adventurous musicianship with plenty of symphonic elements and even a touch of bucolic Folk here and there, based on elegant acoustic parts and light string sections.What really impresses the listener is the tons of shifting changes even in the shortest track and the ability of the band to blend so well harmony and complexity.The well-crafted vocal arrangements, a trademark of the band, are excellent and have strong GENTLE GIANT references.The music is based also on GENTLE GIANT's highly sophisticated style.Delicate string parts meet Heavy Rock guitar workouts and various keyboards exercises like synths, organ and piano in furious and tight arrangements.The more Classic Prog passages contain also strong YES vibes, especially in the STEVE HOWE-like guitar movements.What applies for the 10 opening tracks appears also in the long ambitious epic of the album.Impressive, complex, harmonic and intricate Progressive Rock, somewhere between GENTLE GIANT and YES, with beautiful melodic themes but also challenging and complicated instrumental soundscapes of high quality with a heavy dose of some of the best vocal harmonies you can meet.

Great follow-up to the very nice self-titled debut.Already from their second release Echolyn seem like a mature group of musicians ready to conquer the Prog world.Highly recommended to all fans of balanced and highly sophisticated Progressive music.