GOOD BYE FLIED EGG

Second and final album from Flied Egg is a bit of a mess. This simply isn't a cohesive musical statement. I'm going to give it 3 stars, mainly because as mentioned by "Ozzy Tom," the final track has to be heard to be believed. What's amazing is that this band could clearly have gone the organ trio route had they so desired. Shigeru Narumo must be one of the very few musicians to be a monster hard rock guitarist and equally amazing keyboardist.

As regards the sound quality mentioned in the review above, I'm not sure I'm really hearing any real problems in this respect. In fact, the live stuff was clearly "touched up" and the production is quite decent. The vocals even sound overcooked to me and don't sound legitimately live at all on portions of the live set. The Uriah Heep borrowings are rampant in the vocal dept and the song ideas as well. I suspect for their hard rock side, this was their biggest influence along with probably Mountain and Deep Purple. Led Zeppelin, too. Maybe a bit of Sabbath. But their "arty" side is more from King Crimson, The Beatles, The Nice ..

The wankery level is a bit high. There is enough soloing on just four live cuts to have been spread over a double live album. The chops are nuts, but speed burning guitar or fast, slamming drums are certainly not going to cover up for a lack of musical depth.

Influences from British and American rock are a cross between tribute-like and cheap. You're just not sure at what level to appreciate them and at what level to dismiss this band as incapable of truly forging their own path. But the influences do vary. Whether it's Hiro Tsunoda's imitating of Ian Paice at one point, the obvious references to Crimson's "Epitaph" on "Out To The Sea" or a few Byron-like vocal gyrations, this isn't a band locked into any one corner. But that's the thing, it feels like some more focus could have done this album well. It's all over the map! When you go from hard blues rock to something that could have been on a Nice album, it's at least interesting but I'm not sure they do most things very well. It's more like they do all of these things half-decent and have great chops, but this results in a somewhat musically empty final product here.