SWINESONG

I had heard quite a bit about this band before I came across their music, so was intrigued and very interested when I was sent the album. I have come across a few progressive rock bands from Israel, and they have always produced something out of the ordinary, but having now played this many times all I can say for sure is that these guys have done just that. But the real question is, is it any good? They are doing an awful lot in the space of just one album, so expect metal and lounge and 'straight' prog mixed in with jazz, pop and pretty much anything you can think of, but I kept coming back to the same basic premise, of was I enjoying what I was listening to? There are passages here that are superb, quite breathtaking in their audacity, but there are others where I just kept asking myself 'why?'

To say that I have eclectic tastes is something of an understatement, and I can go from folk to death metal on a whim, I am as happy at a Rick Wakeman solo piano concert as I am at Behemoth, but I just don't 'get' this album. I listen to 'free' improvised jazz and that makes more musical sense to me than this, but I keep thinking that it is probably me that is missing the point here and that there are many others who are going to have very high opinions of this. To my mind it is still a solid 3* album, but I keep having that nagging feeling in the back of my mind that I should mark this higher but I just can't bring myself to do so. When it is good it is very good indeed, but to me it misses the mark on too many occasions.