MACHIAVEL

3 stars for Machiavel debut, leaning more to 2 stars then 4. Most of the songs are more art rock then progressive, it's just to watered down for me. If judging by this album alone, Machiavel would fit better in crossover genre of prog than eclectic but I didn't have a listen of other albums just yet.

For me this album's weak points are sort of the strong ones, the most sentimental and maybe needlesly prolonged ballads are the ones that I could listen to once in a while, "Cry No More" has a decent guitar solo to which it builds up bit slow, and for another example "Leave It Where It Can Stay" is more of the same with more synths in the play and guitar follow them nicely, more of that sad atmosphere going on. All of those by the way, very vocal oriented. "When Johan Died" is more reminiscent of the classic prog genre and being rock in its form, and I guess the spacey opener "Johan's Brother..." is ok, but even it overstays it's welcome. All the rest I find pretty unmemorable, except the previously unreleased "To Be Free", I remember that one cause it's straight up rock'n'roll and if it were me I would leave it unreleased. And while talking about these new tracks, I can only see hard fans going for it, "Don't Remember" being the only decent one that's more like the ballads from the original. There is some potential in this band and I presume by looking at ratings that after the debut MACHIAVEL gets much better.