VICTORIA AND THE HARUSPEX

The Red Masque's activity would expand also in organizing music events entering year 2002 and one of these was the Philadelphia Underground Music and Culture Festival.The same year Kevin Kelly would leave his place to drummer Brian Van Korn (aka Vonorn) with the band recording the first-full length album during the spring 2002 at The Underground Studio in Philly.The title would be ''Victoria and the Haruspex''.

''Haruspex'', which is the centerpiece of the album with a running time over 24 minutes, refers to the ancient method by a person trained to practice a form of divination called haruspicy, but stylistically it is not close to what you should imagine The Red Masque would developed to.This one borders between experimental forms and loose structures, based on guitar dissonances, sinister drumming, low-key moments and KING CRIMSON-ian experimentations, including vintage keyboards, dark chord scratching, dreamy synths, electronic or instrumental, distorted manifests and haunting female voices by Lynnette Shelley.Nowhere near to what the band offered in the previous EP and practically directionless with a mood towards abstract music palettes.With ''Birdbrain'' things will be back on track for a nice seminar of old and modern prog sounds, this is good female-fronted Prog Rock with occasional keyboard flashes and slightly symphonic undertones, while the changes in tempos are present and eventually some nice melodic guitar lines will sit next to Shelley's deep voice.The next two tracks, ''Afterloss'' and ''Cenotaph'', are primarly acoustic-oriented numbers with a minimalistic atmosphere and lots of harp lines, ending up to be rather boring and monotonous with only a good performance by Shelley on vocals.The second of these cuts was dedicated to Nathan-Andrew Dewin's brother Alan.

I think The Red Masque were unfair to themselves with such a release, because the talent is there.''Victoria and the Haruspex'' is more likely to please fans of Experimental Rock and Acoustic Music than any Prog Rock fan.One decent piece over a running time of 48 minutes is not enough to save this work...1.5 stars.