IN THE WAKE OF EVOLUTION

In a way prog is an extreme type of rock, stretching the genre to its limits and exploring the outskirts of its possibilities. This has created some of the best rock music ever but unfortunately, as it goes with extremities, the balance can shift entirely the other way as well and produce very distressing kitsch. That is what happened on In The Wake Of Evolution.

When it comes to stale symphonic bombast, In The Wake Of Evolution easily surpasses all competition. First of all there's the in your face Yes plagiarism. Mimicking another band is not wrong as such, but unluckily Kaipa doesn't capture the creative genius of Yes at all. This is a gaudy Yes make-over that sounds more like Tormato then like any other album. The synths are loud and tasteless, the guitar lines overwrought, the solos pointless, the melodies cliché and so on. In short, everything that can go wrong with a symphonic album does go wrong here.

If the hollow Yes style-exercises won't warn you off, the plenty AOR influences on this album sure might. In the Heart of her own Magic Field for instance is flat commercial FM-rock. The folk commonplace added on top won't help. And on it goes for a full 70 grating minutes in total. Only the closing track has an anthemic chorus that kind of works, even if it's as old as the hills.

This music sounds completely fake to me, while wearing the glitter cloak of prog, there is not one minute on this album that is blessed with the true spirit of progressive rock: there is no heart in this music, no personality, no creativity, no artistic vision, no decent compositions and no emotion.

In The Wake Of Evolution is a flashy pastiche of symphonic prog that offers striking arguments for all prog bashers to claim prog as the worst and most tasteless music ever made. Who can blame them when hearing this album. It's a shame really, prog produced and continues to produce some of the most stellar music ever. Kaipa however is catered for sympho die-hards only; the remainder of the world has no need for this album at all. Formulaic and forgettable.