TRAVELOG

After two years, I am finally writing a review of this great 2015 album released by Kinetic Element, a band led by Mike Visaggio who shares here a 5-song record full of symphonic elements that make the listener have a good time. It opens with the challenging "War Song", a 20-minute epic that doesn't hide the inspiration Visaggio took from some keyboard icons such as Wakeman or Emerson. The rhythmic section is great, bass and drums always accurate doing a good job, while guitars help a lot with its different figures. As you can imagine, the song has quite a lot of changes in mood and time, it brings both, instrumental passages and the ones with vocals, being the first one found at minute five. I must say that LeFavors voice is not my favorite, which doesn't mean could be anyone's favorite, of course. The flavor of the music is quite from the 70s, in spite the album is from this millennium, and it actually shows a sneak peek of what the sound of Kinetic Element will be in the rest of the album.

"Travelog" is a 10-minute track and it is actually the shortest one, go figure. It starts with a soft passage with acoustic guitar, then vocals appear as well as the other instruments and begin to built up a structure with a pastoral sound, very gentle but if you push me, it could turn a bit boring after some minutes. "Into the Lair" brings a more dramatic sound, a much more interesting mood (in my opinion, of course) than the previous track, creating a neo-prog sound that later is nicely joined by a sweet female voice. In this song we can notice how good musicians they are, their skills can be highlighted here, which in my opinion, is a nice example of what an excellent progressive rock song is. "Her" is a pretty nice song that doesn't have a bombastic symphonic sound, but a soft one, accompanied by a different singer that has a beautiful colour. Keyboards always create the background; there is a passage where guitar appears with a nice solo, so in the end one can easily enjoy this track.

The album finishes with another long epic entitled "Vision of a New Dawn" which is another good example of a great progressive rock song, developed with ambitious instrumental passages that show the musician's skills as composers and performers. After five minutes the song changes, vocals enter and together with piano create a tender sound tht later will be complemented by strings and drums, in fact, guitars have a special Howe-sque feeling. Some changes in the song and in the end the 18 minutes pass fast, which let us know the music is good. Now I am eagerly waiting to see Kinetic Element next Progtoberfest at Chicago.

Enjoy it!

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