HYBRIS

It doesn't suprise me that this album is ranked in the top 20 prog albums here. It features everything a typical progger love, and take inspirations from all the classical prog bands in the seventies, especially Genesis, Yes and King Crimson. You can even see it as a tribute to classic, symphonic prog, all elements are featured. That means great arrangements and very skilled playing in each track, and that almost every proggy little instrument is featured, but also that most things on the album is recognizable, and that the band shows very little of their "own style". And I am sure that such a side excist, because between all the proggy inspirations you can hear a folky, beautiful, kind of own style I apreciate very much.

Theré are lyrics in 3 of the 4 songs, and they are all in swedish. They sound poetic, wise and thoughtful, but at the same time quite wimsy and it's hard to know what they are all about sometimes, even if faith and truth seem to be main subjects. You can make it trough without knowing the lanquage or the meaning, sincethey are not a big deal compared with the instrumental arrangements. However, they help the songs to keep their focus and can act as somekind of relief between the intense instrumentals.

What can you then say about hte music? It's very complex and skilled, very symphonic, both intense and calm, but most of all it's very variating and tighted together. There are very seldom just one instrument in focus (if there are, it will not last long at all) instead there are many of them played at the same time creating an entirety. All the time there are instruments jumping out while new jumping in. The instruments, the mood and the rythm (you can hear some Crimson-like stop-and-start moments several times) changes all the time. For a progger, that's of course very good, but it can sometimes be quite demanding to listen too when the music jumps just a little bit too much. With all those things going around there are always something new to observe over the listenings, however.

The first song, Jordrök, is the "worst" one if you ask me. It's very complex and has some catchy guitars and a powerful church organ in the middle, but I dont think the complex parts sound that good with their lack of melody and despite all the changes the song manages to feel a little bit repetative and pointless since the parts it changes between are very similar in mood and structure. You can summarize it with: a lot of guitars and organs, a hectic mood and constant changes between symphonic , melodic parts and very complex dissonant and confusing parts. Still, it's not bad song and other proggers at this site seem to apreciate this one very much.

Vandringar i vilsenhet is (despite it's name meaning something like "walks in confusion" when translated) a more focused song witha better arrangement. It begins with a mysterious, gloomy organ and developes into a mellow song with melodic guitars and a lot of flute, together with some wimsy vocals. At the end of the song it changes to a more worried and angry sound with some more dramatic aggarngements. A good song.

Från klarhet till klarhetbegins with an awful intro, but that lasts no longer than less than a half minute so its no big deal. It then turns out to be an organ loving progger's wet dream, with a lot of organs, guitars and intense drumming. Very good and catchy song!

The last one, Kung Bore, can be called the albums epic. While all the songs are in equal lenght, this have to be the most ambitious, symphonic and powerful of them all. In the beginning it has a very folky mood, but later slowly developes into dramatic, mellotron driven symphonic prog.

This album has some outstanding playing and arrangements,some beautiful mellow parts and some dynamic intense parts. It fails to bring something new to us, but takes the best from the classic prog era in the seventies. Since I dont like the first song that much, it's probably a "four stars" for my own taste, but with all those great, proggy moments in the two last songs, with the tight arrangements and writing, and with so many prog elements, I can't deny that this is the proggiest album I have heard and manages to capture almost everything apreciated by prog lovers, and therefore have to deserve five stars. It's the great tribute for all prog-lovers