FUTURE AWAITS

RC2 was formed in Caracas, Venezuela, during 1999 following the break-up of Radio Clip, a popular act that released four albums in Venezuela between 1988 and 1994, selling thousands of albums, having number 1 singles and Gold records on the Venezuelan charts. Radio Clip started off as quite a pop-oriented outfit, but became much heavier throughout their career. After three of the members left, Arturo Torres (bass) and Félix Duque (lead vocals) decided that they wanted to keep working together, and brought in some more musicians and the group moved more into a progressive rock direction, and they changed the name. It was again put on hold when Arturo moved to the States, but the rest of ythe guys decided to continue, and the line-up stabilised with Félix, Eduardo Benatar (drums), Demian Mejicano (guitar), Rafael Paz (keyboards) and Pedro Misle (bass). Their history is rather unusual and complex, has involved such minor things such as people moving to Spain, playing their first concert only after they had been together for four years, then later landing the opening slot for Dream Theater in Venezuela only for their current guitarist to be unavailable, so their previous guitarist (who hadn't played with them for five years) rehearsed with them for three days to get the job done!

'Future Awaits' was their second album, and the first to be performed in English. Apparently the debut, which was released some five years prior to this one, was very much in the prog metal camp, but this is much more symphonic in nature. Mauricio Barroeta had replaced Demian, but the rest of the line-up remained the same. I wasn't sure what to expect from a Venezuelan progtressive rock act, but it certainly wasn't a delicate and symphonic album with as much strenhgth and depth as this one. The drums and bass are much higher in the mix, and Edurado in particular has produced an incredibly dominant performance ? he understands the impact he has, so there are complete sectins where he doesn't play at all, and others where he is providing much more of a polyrhythmic performance that one would normally expect from this style of music.

All the songs are infectious, compelling, and totally enjoyablel on first hearing. It is hard to imagine that apparently the music was written and recorded with none of the lyrics or even the melody lines worked out beforehand. The instrumental "El Diablo Suelte" is a load of fun, and is easily the most South American thing out there, with some wonderful picked guitar lines, and is that a ukelele I hear? There is a lot here to enjoy, and fans of bands such as Genesis, Kansas and Styx and even The Flower Kings will get a lot out of this.