THE 7 SAMURAI

Well, another Colossus epic. This time only one CD, with 3 bands, each doing an epic piece. The concept is the movie The 7 Samurai, a movie I've never seen (actually, I haven't really seen any of the movies these concepts are based on.........though Kalevala was not based on any movie, and The Odyssey doesn't appear to be either......though obviously both are based on ancient epic narratives). In any case, I was skeptical of this concept idea. But reading the synopsis in the booklet I suppose it works fairly well over all. I should point out that once again Colossus gives us an outstanding informative booklet to enhance the experience greatly.

On to the music. The first epic is by far the best, and is symphonic Italian prog at its finest. CAP did not impress me on their last contribution (Odyssey), as I felt the song was too long. The melodies, while enjoyable didn't hold the song together that well. While it had enjoyable sections, the whole just seemed overly stretched and not as strong as other songs on that project. Here, however, they correct all that I felt was wrong with the previous contribution (and this track is only a minute shorter). Beautiful melodies, wonderful instrumentation, fantastic playing and singing. A 5 star epic, in the classic Italian tradition.

Tempano, unfortunately has the opposite effect with this contribution. While I very much liked their track on Odyssey, here they dissapoint me with a fairly dull and repetitive track. It has some bits that are interesting, but overall has a slow, plodding tempo and an over long jam/improv section in the middle where very little seems to happen (around 10 minutes of this!). I'm afraid this is, at most, a 2 or 3 start song for me. If it had been several minutes shorter, I might have thought better of it.

Finally, Tapobran lives up to their previous contribution on The Spaghetti Epic, with a delightful Italian symphonic piece in the vein of Le Orme. They are a keyboard driven trio (with a guest on sax and flute) that avoid comparisons to ELP. A quite good song to end the album with some great playing throughout. A solid 4 star song.

It is interesting to me that I have never heard any of these bands work outside of these projects (true of most of the bands in the other projects as well). I may try to check some out eventually, but I suspect that the requirements of these projects result in music that is not necessarily characteristic of these bands normal output. In any case, I love these projects. So overall, this is a good installment. An overall 4 star CD.