RORSCHACH'S CONUNDRUM

Bad Alchemy debuts with an album tinged with modern progressive rock touches like the female vocals and some of the guitar soloes and Canterbury Scene. The work is undoubtedly influenced/inspired by Hatfield and The North with one tune being a reference to a H&N song that was released on The Rotters Club remaster.

Prelude to Pandemonium is just a little opener.

The Wooden Box starts with female vocals then adds guitar arpeggios/male vocals then rolls with that for some time. Eventually, the song patters out with some light percussion sounds and quiet muttering vocals then some more singing plus marimba. Closing the song is some ambience.

Track three starts like track one but doesn't end after one minute. Rather you get piano and somewhat deep male vocals. This is subsumed by a different vocal section. Classical esque instrumental happens then some earlier singing returns. The song just kind of ends after this, never building up to anything in its 8 minutes.

The next three tracks are a suite that sound like something that could have been condensed into 3~ minutes and used as an interlude, not an eight minute long song.

The last two songs are like track 2/3 but more Canterbury Sceneish due to the male singer presenting what seems to be a light British accent.

Overall this is a pretty mediocre album in my opinion that is outdone by their following album. If one wishes to try Bad Alchemy I wouldn't recommend this one first. Finally one of my biggest issues with this band is their songs sound like someone butchered them in editing, removing whole tracks because each section has a very thin instrumentation. When one instrument enters another is taken out which frankly gets predictable and annoying as nothing is properly developed. There is also a strong spacey vibe due to the frequent appearance of sections with pretty much nothing happening. It's not bad but it certainly isn't good.