OPHELIA

Entering the second half of the 80's, Fromage were in front of several line-up shakes. Hayashi, Kondo and Shimamura all left the group and they were replaced by guitarist Tohru Ohta, bassist Yuji Tanaka and keyboardist Yoshihiko Kitamura.In 1988 with the support of the Belle Antique label the group released the second album ''Ophelia'', obviously inspired by the character of the same name in William Shakespeare's Hamlet.

New band members does not necessarily means a change in the music style and Fromage remained faith to the sound of their debut, this is typically 80's-styled Japanese Symphonic Rock in the style of MUGEN or TERU'S SYMPHONIA.While the overall approach is still quite grandiose, Fromage belonged to the list of bands that avoided the Hard Rock cliches of many of their compatriots, though their sound had always a strong pompous flavor, especially when synthesizers were in full use.However the majority of the album is a very atmospheric and often melancholic Symphonic Rock with downtempo song structures, good instrumental parts with a Classical edge and expressive Japanses vocals.The new members had fully adapted the band's style, established by Manabu Higashizawa.Ohta delivers some excellent melodic guitar lines, Tanaka offers deep and solid bass lines, while Kitamura had the most difficult work to do, filling the compositions with his keyboards colors, and he did a great job in all these bombastic synth moves, strong organ waves and soft piano interludes dominating the album.Only a couple of shorter tunes are closer to a more accesible Neo Prog sound, but these sound charming as well.

Very good Japanese Symphonic Rock, suffering a bit from a mediocre production, but the music in here has a great value.Grab the CD reissue of Belle Antique, which contains a live version of ''Toma'' along with excellent symphonic mini epic ''Seruroido no sora'', which sounds even better than the tracks of the original issue.Recommended stuff.