THE SUN ALSO RISES

Recently I realised I haven´t written a review for Knight Area's debut album, even if I had this CD early on. For some reason I did not give the attention it deserved. I guess I had too many new bands to check at the time (I had rediscovered prog music in 2002, so I had a lot to catch up). Anyway, this dutch band then produced great stuff in the following years and got a well deserved fame as one of the best neo prog bands to appear in the new millennium. But last week I found this CD and decided to give it a proper listening and I was quite surprised with what I heard.

For some reason I have always thought The Sun Also Rises was a kind of good, but derivative record, with the band still finding its way. Upon listening to it after all these years I found that this reasoning was wrong: although one could hardly called the music here challenging, the sound was already very much their own by the time they decided to put their stuff on record. Looking at the credits we see a band that was changing members during the recording of this album. However, the album flow is very even and you can´t tell the struggles they might have been facing. With absolute no fillers, Knight Area delivers a CD that is full of great songs, beautiful melodies and tasteful arrangements. I really love those Hackett/Gilmour/Rothery-like emotional guitar solos, the Banks-ish keyboards sounds, the tight rhythm section and their strong sense of melody. Mark Smit may not be the best singer around, but his delivering is more than adequate and quite convincing. Although the music here is not that original, their songwriting is far superior than most bands and it is no wonder they delivered so many excellent records in the next years.

It is hard to point a highlight, since the whole CD is beautiful and strong, but my favourites are the powerful Conspiracy and the fantastic title track with its guitar/keys duels. With a very good production for the time, The Sun Also Rises is one of the best debuts of any neo prog bands I´ve seen in many years. And I´m glad I had the opportunity to rediscover this gem I had forgotten in my collection. If you like fantastic melodies, vintage sounding keys and superb performances you can not miss this one.

Rating: 4,5 stars. Highly recommended!