PARADOXES

'Paradoxes', released in 1993, is the debut album of German 'Art Prog' band, Everon. On initially putting the disk on, it is easy to hear the technical proficiency and vocal clarity, which would later mark out Oliver Philipp's vehicle as an important player in the genre. There is no doubt that 'Paradoxes' would find favour with those who are fans of Enchant, Saga, and to an extent, mid 80's era Rush.

However, this is the band's debut, and as such is quite raw, and the music suffers from a number of pit-falls, which they would overcome with compositional maturity in future releases. My main problem with 'Paradoxes' is that with each track, you are dazzled, both with frenetic, technical bombast, at the expense of enduring tunes; a very similar pitfall to that which for me, befell the 'Wounded' and 'Timelost' releases by Enchant. I am left with the feeling that 'less really could have been so much more' and am dying for Everon to vary the tempo and even include a few ballads!

There is a similiar story vocally, as Philipps not only sings as quickly, but also tries to cram a line of dialogue in with every brief musical passage, and mostly at the same pitch. Overall, this contributes to an album, which has 9 perfectly adequate, technically proficient tracks which abound with promise, but ultimately sound very similar to each other. It may be a personal thing, but I feel that if I'm listening to an album for the 6th time, and I'm still having difficulty identifying any of the tracks, then the album won't have a long shelf life in my collection.

Having said this, it is the 'promnise' of greater things which gives the album 2 stars, and although its difficult to pick out a stand-out track, if pushed, I would pick 'Circles', which benefits from the slightly slower tempo.