ARMENIA

The massacre of over a million Armenians during World War One is the main subject of the new album by the Dutch Life Line Project. Still officially denied by the larger part of the world, Life Line Project wish to denounce this terrible and shameful page of the history of humanity and therefore they have dedicated their ninth album to the people of Armenia.

As you may expect, the main title, the four part suite, entitled "Armenia" deals with this genocide.

The Suite opens with the beautiful and touching main theme, played on the Grand piano. The first part is entirely instrumental and displays lots of beautiful and melodic themes with a main role for the keyboards (here lots of Moogs & Hammond can be enjoyed). The gloomy mood dominates part one of the suite. The darkest and most sombre part however, is part two, in which the story of the endless march towards death (in the Syrian city of Deir-Ez-Zor) is painfully described, both in words and music. The second part of this suite is a perfectly crafted piece of symphonic rock, with oppressive dissonants in the vocal parts, culminating in a dark march, played on several drums with again dissonant mellotron chords hovering above. This part also has beautiful and more warm sounding themes, because hope is never abandoned. Part 3 is an acoustic little gem, played by the oboe and piano only, affectingly sung by Marion Brinkman. Here the hope of a ressurrection of the Armenian people in a new state is expressed. The suite (and the album) concludes with an exultant and jubilant finale in which the Moogs of keyboard player Erik de Beer are celebrating the rebirth of the Armenian people in virtuoso and melodic solos over a solid rhythm section. The suite concludes with the main theme, again played on a lonesome Grand piano.

The rest of the album consists of well-conceived symphonic rock songs, all armed with beautiful guitar-leads and perfectly executed keyboard parts. The oboe and flute, combined with the many acoustic plucked instruments (lute, chitarrone, mandolin, 12 string guitar and so on) add to the warmth of the Life Line Project sound. I very much liked the French sung "Dans le Ciel", which alternates beautiful acoustic passages with massive sounding symphonic themes.

We are dealing with a lowbudget production here, so the sound might have been thicker, but the transparency of the recording makes you aware of every instrument and every detail played.

In fact, this is one of my favourite albums of 2013!

Oscillator.

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