IN 453 MINUTES INFERNAL COOKING

Il Berlione is one of the more overlooked bands around here, this of course must change because this is truly an exceptional and an exciting new band to discover. Although adopting an italian band name, they are 5 japanese dudes, all brilliant musicians combining saxophone, xylophone and keys with their guitar, drums and bass. It seems the band had a short lifetime since they have released only two albums in the course of two years, and faded away like they were never here. "In 453 Minutes Infernal Cooking" is their second album, released after their superb debut it seems like the band cooled down a bit and went for a more jazzy kind of eclectic rock, out goes their RIO/avant weirdness stuff and their aggressive wildness,making their debut so great, leaving us with a more laid back jammy approach. Although this is more jazzy tinged album, they can still heavily rock when they find it appropriate, listed before under jazz rock the eclectic sub genre is more defining of their music.

There is no arguing this band is capble of playing, the musicians are outstanding and the band works as an overall, they are tight and cohesive without straining to much, i love that about them! The music like i mentioned before is above all eclectic, jazzy progressive and rocky when needed. The material is not as good as in their debut, in this 70 minutes album the band has very good moments and some mediocare moments, almost boring, bordering elevator music at times, what manages to save them is their great playing. It looks to me like some of the tracks here lacks a certain amount of punch, instead of focusing on a good idea, they are going around it, examing it and not attacking it. They seem to choose the easy laid back way, and the whole thing sounds too jammy and while doing that, misses the point and leaves the listener unimpressed, knowing he could get so much more. Said that i still think for you who already knows their debut should have this as well.

Out of the whole album i think at least more than half is good, the rest is mediocare but never bad. Every member has it's own moment to shine, saxophone is already all over the place and maybe dominating the album, drums have a solo track, piano have a solo track and guitar has a solo track as well. Keys are somewhat pushed aside here, and does not shine at all, i already know guitarist Naoya Idonuma is phenomenal but here he has good moments at best and not amazing, featuring some good solos and some uninspired ones, it's like a different guitarist in the lineup. Sax is sometime very good and sometime very cold and boring, drums are maybe the best, having few drum sounds which is nice, Masahiro Kawamura manages to be brilliant and very exciting.

The album starts very promising with an interesting track, that takes all the band's musical styles and squeezes them into less than two minutes, they go from weird to hard rocking to eclectic to jazzy, loose and very tight together, cool idea, well done and very exciting. Highlights are 'Koenji Sake Bar' which i used it's amazing opening 45 seconds as my ringtone!! 'Human Head Soup', 'At the Foot of Polyethylene Tree' featuring great playing by all members and good ideas executed well. Other tracks all have good ideas but some are not developed well. Solo tracks flows good with the rest of the album but does not lift the album up since it is not a joint effort. The album ends with the first track being played in a reversed order, again pretty cool and well done.

Overall a good album but nothing to be too excited by. I would suggest to go for their amazing debut first. I wish this wasn't their last album, since i haven't found any information regarding the musicians after this album, where they went and who they teamed up with. 3 stars will be just fine.