THE MEETING

It's obvious the Australian band Aragon were influenced by early Genesis, Marillion and IQ. Especially the voice of their singer sounds a bit like Fish/Peter Gabriel but some may dislike the raw sound of it due to the similarities with the sound of a crow. On a song like "The Chant" one can get an idea of what Genesis would have sounded in the beginning of the eighties when Gabriel had stayed in the band. This is a prog song with dominant rhythm parts, reminiscent to "back in NYC".

Aragon is typical neo-prog at its best because of the theatrical vocals and the good song writing. The 6 tracks on this album are short tracks with strong melodies with the exception of "the changeling" which clocks over 9 minutes. There's a lot of programming in the arrangements and this gives a mechanical feel to the music. Especially the rhythm section sounds very cold and clean. Strange enough this cold atmosphere fits the music perfectly. In this way the emphasis is on the emotional and dramatic vocals. Listening to this record, you can tell this isn't music that puts you in a happy mood. Like the other Aragon records the mood on this record is cold, dark, fearful and sad. I don't know if the intention of this record is religious in any way but one would get the impression by looking at the cover art and listening to the martyr like vocals of Les Dougan. The keyboard parts show some resemblances with the way Mark Kelly handles the keyboards but here it's more repetitive and the sounds are more diverse. My favourite moments on this album are the floating title track and the romantic "Tugging at the heartstrings" which couldn't be more true to its name. The excellent track "On the edge" is a traditional closing track that's simply beautiful. Here, the additional sax parts adds the necessary amount of emotion to the music. There's some memorable symphonic chords in "The Changeling" but this epic consists of a succession of very different fragments tied together. It lacks a natural flow. The original version of this record was a mini Cd and that's also the version I used for writing this review. At the time of release the band were preparing a concept album that had to become their magnum opus : "mouse". I believe this mini-album was released to fill in the gap between their first album from 1988 and "mouse" which would see the light of day in 1995. The songs on this album are the fifth part of the "mouse" concept. Nevertheless this little record is enjoyable on its own. There're lots of bands that use the legacy of early Genesis/Marillion for developing their own style later on. This may be the explanation why this album has been overlooked shamelessly. Not a very original album but certainly not a bad one either.