SAFE

Safe is the fourth studio album from Polish progressive rock act Collage. Collage third album Moonshine (1994) is considered a classic Polish progressive rock album and deservedly so IMO. To follow up on an album many people believe is a masterpiece or at least an excellent album is a very hard task and even though Safe is not as significant a release as Moonshine I think Collage succeeds pretty well after all.

The musical style hasn´t changed much since Moonshine and we´re still treated with very melodic progressive rock dominated by keyboards and synths. The guitars from Mirek Gil are also very beautiful and melodic while the characteristic and untamed drumming from Wojtek Szadkowski is somewhat toned down on Safe. He still delivers some great drumming though. The vocals from Robert Amirian are in Steve Hogarth style ( Marillion) which means that they have a slight hard rock sound to them while still maintaining the melodic qualities. I am normally not a big fan of that kind of vocal style but it works pretty fine here. The music is predominantly influenced by bands like Marillion and IQ. Very rooted in eighties progressive rock ( neoprog if you will).

Like Moonshine the album is very long. The playing time is 71:01 minutes but there are several great songs on Safe which means that the album never gets trivial. I really enjoy songs like Eight Kisses and One of Their Kind but I don´t think any of the songs here are weak.

The musicianship is excellent. Lots of great performances here and the compositional level is also very high.

The production is a bit more balanced than the very pompeous and grand production on Moonshine. It´s even a bit warm. It´s still a grand production with dominant keyboards though.

Moonshine is without a doubt Collage´s main work and if you´re new to the band you should start with that one but Safe is not far behind and if you like Moonshine chances are you´ll enjoy Safe very much as well. It´s not my biggest 4 star rating ever but a 4 star rating it is.