BLACK NOISE

I always felt that these guys had Rush in mind when they were developing their sound. While the sound is less heavy than Rush, this Canadian trio seemed to imitate some of Rush's phrasing a liitle too often for me to believe it was a coincidence. The difference in the instrumentation does help to differentiate from Rush, but being a power trio with a bass player who also sings and plays keyboards, the comparisons must come up.

Phasors On Stun begins with som Peart-like drum fills, then the song settles in closer to arena rock than true prog. One O'Clock Tomorrow is lighter, but proggier at the start. Unfortunately, just when this song sounds like it's going to take off, it settles into a predictable musical theme. Hours, although short, is where the band first goes all out into prog. It's a fusion-tinged piece, that would have fit in on a National Health album.

Journey is another song that sounds like they were thinking of Rush. Sure the vocals and instruments have different tones than Rush would have used, but the phrasing of the song sound very Rush-like. Like Hours, Dialing For Dharma is a short instrumental piece. It's an mostly electronic song, with a nice violin solo by Nash The Slash.

Slaughter In Robot Village is all-out prog, and here the band shows more of there own style. This is another instrumental piece. But I can't help comparing Deller's style to Peart. Alderberan is a ballad, and here Nash's mandolin sounds a bit like Hackett's guitar in Genesis

Black Noise at ten minutes, is the epic on the album. While I wouldn't say it's a prog masterpiece, it does have enough to keep me interested all the way through.

It's good that this band has violin, and mandolin instead of guitars. I suspect if that were not the case, this would sound even more like Rush. But luckily, they do get enough of their own sound in to avoid being a clone.

3.5 stars, rounded up.