JOURNEY OF THE SHAMAN

Nemrud's debut album is a fine work which develops simple rock songs stickied together to make a "prog" epic structure. It has great energy in it, ofcourse it can get a bit boring sometimes becouse of their amateur approach. The three parts has some memorable segments, and they rock pretty well in it.

Consisting of just 3 tracks "Journey of The Shaman" is, perhaps predictably, a concept album. This is a slightly psychedelic piece of conceptual, quite hard rocking music. The concept is based around the Shaman character name Mitos, pysical and spiritual journey. These three songs represent the three stage of immortality in Shamanism belief.

The whole piece is well structured and carefully arranged and psychedelic jamming feeling. Mert Gocay's guitar sound is loud and strong throughout. On some passages the bass guitar and the electric guitar remind me slightly of Hawkwind and Camel respectively. It is hard to compare this album to works by other bands. Some say this is similar to Pink Floyd or Eloy, but not very much, in my opinion. This is a pretty unique band and unique sound...

The lead vocals are not the best, but certainly not bad either. The lyrics are quite interesting and unusual. The instruments involved, however, are basically just the traditional ones - electric guitar, bass, drums and organ but you will find beautiful Moog synthesiser solos here. Mert Gocay is the one who compose of all songs, probably he is driving force of this band. I do believe their second album will masterpiece for progressive rock listeners ! The first couple of times I heard this album I liked it but it still left very little lasting impression on me, but it grew on me and after several listens I begun to appreciate it more and more. This album is very listenable and never annoying or boring even if it is far from being as loaded with musical ideas.