HALF-LIVE

"Half-Live" is a new, delightful studio album by one of my favourite Polish prog bands, Lizard. There guys have been around for way over 20 years now, and man, they still come up with a great material. Actually, I'd consider "Half-Live" to be the best Lizard album, right after their wonderful "W galerii czasu" debut.

Everything is in the right place in here. The instrumentation is very well balanced, every instrument gets some important roles in the structure of the piece, none of them seem more important than the other. The violin feature in the first part of the piece is a really nice touch and recalls the UK and early King Crimson influences. Damian Bydlinski's rich and poetic lyrics (anti-war message, it seems) are great, as always. Too bad all the non- polish listeners are going to miss on that. Also, I wanna mention just how amazing the artwork is! I love both the concept and the color scheme, very much in Roger Dean's style. Gotta be my new favourite Polish prog-rock cover art from now on. Unfortunetely the band doesn't really break any new grounds here, everything you're going to hear on this album was done before at some point. I'm also kinda tired of the band proclaming their music as "hard, difficult and unpleasant", which just seems a little bit pretentious. I mean, this album isn't pushing any new boundaries of prog music, let's just be clear about that. Still though, I'm very positively surprised by this album. Both great material and performance. As I mentioned ealier - I'd consider it to be the best Lizard album since the debut. I'm very happy to hear the band in great shape, and wish for more new music, which hopefully'll be a bit more experimental and cutting edge. Definitely worth recommendation, especially if you're into classic retro prog.