SISYFOS

WOW. What an album this last output from the Spanish band Rivendel. When I wrote a comment on the previous album, DHD, I said that It was their best effort until then, but I have to confess that this one is even better and, more than this, much more personal and interesting. For the first time in its carreer they include a conventional drummer and this is a really good thing. As the previous album, this one is completely instrumental. Whit the leivmotiv of Sisyfos, the Greek character damned to roll up the hill eternaly a enormeus stone, the album develop several ambients and moods, mixing long tracks with others more concises acting like interludes. From the pinkfloyesche "Charon crossing teh Styx" until the last "Sysyphus and the Rock" (both them more than 12 minutes long), Sysyfos is mainly an amazing trip through dark landscapes . Some of these premises were already in DHD but here are much more developed. The seed in DHD is here a big tree with multiple branches, sinking its roots in the whole progressive rock history, with special affinity for its darkest manifestations (Univers Zero, Present, King Crimson, even some zeuhl traces). Sisyfos is a fantastic album but, as I said concerning the previous one, this is not a neoprog album, this is more a RIO-avant one, even when you can find too echoes from more conventional sounds For me, this album had to have the subtite of "Sounds of mystery and imagination". Not in vain, when I listen to some tracks, I feel an immediate association with the fall of the Usher's house. Maybe cause by the impact of the Sisyfos' stone rolling down the hill.