IRONY OF FATE

Gerard is the first Japanese progrock band I ever heard and they are still my favorite, especially because of keyboard wizard Toshio Egawa his amazing skills on Hammond, Korg and Melltotron. After their two excellent first two albums Gerard (1984) and Emptie Lie, Empty Dream (1985) it took six years before Gerard released their third and I remember that I was very glad to receive Irony Of Fate from Japan. Until I listened to it and gradually I realised that the music on this CD was way from the exciting and bombastic symphonic prog on Gerard and Empty Lie, Empty Dream: mainly polished, predictable and lacklustre tracks, only some great work on keyboards but in general this album is a weak effort. Five years later Gerard took revenge on themselves with their strong fourth studio- album The Pendulum but it's no coincidence that Irony Of Fate was not reviewed until now.

Like Erik Neuteboom said, this is among the first japanese bands that i heared. All the music of Gerard is around the stunning keyboard wizard Toshio Ega - his work on hammond, korg and mellotron make envy every key player of of this planet. The music is mainly influence by ELP but with a good cantity of bombastic symphonic arrangements and neo prog moods. Anyway this album is not their best but enjoyble in places, i think the title track Irony of fate is the best here, features nice and smooth piano intro and than an absolute madness on keys, moog. The lyrics are in japanese so for the listners is a minus in Gerard's music. Irony of fate is a 3 star album not bad, not by far, but the next 2 Gerard - Pendulum from 1996 and Pandora's Box from 1997 and the previous one Empty lie, empty dream from 1985 are much better.

After a very symphonic sophomore album, this Japanese band was leaning much more on the neo side of prog with this "Irony And Fate".

Lots of bombastic keyboards are the highlight and it is with great relief that you will acknowledge that this album is almost an all instrumental one. I really don't praise the "performance" from Yukihiro Fujimura in the vocal exercise. But very close to none Japanese singer was able to raise my interest to tell the truth (being male or female).

An orgy of synthesizers is waiting for you during this album. They are often wild and crazy: just listen to the intro of "Last Night Forever"! It is alas ruined with poor vocals which is a pity because the guitar work is also rather convincing.

This album holds some very weak moments as well: the syrupy ballads "My Heart To The Past" and "Prelude" are frankly best avoided. You know the key to press by now, I guess?

The complex "My Eyes To The Panic" sounds almost like an eclectic track and is far much more interesting. It is fully instrumental and it is a pain that the band didn't investigate more into this direction. The album would have highly gained in quality.

The most interesting song is the closing number "Good Night Sleep": superb piano intro, gorgeous synths, as well as fine acoustic guitar moments are a real delight. Again, vocals would have been best avoided. Some wild riff à la "Watcher" can be noticed as well; but that's OK.

To summarize my feeling about this release, I would say that the good sits with the weak and average. As such I rate it with two stars.

With an excellent debut and a quite good follower,Gerard's future seemed bright but surprisingly they decided to call it off,after their label King Records showed no more interest on releasing progressive rock albums.Toshio Egawa went on to hard rock band Earthshaker,but a few years after he re-united Gerard with fellow member guitarist Yukihiro Fujimura.This time they were joined by Toshimi Nagai on bass and Kota Igarashi on drums.Their long-awaited third album ''Irony of fate'' was released in 1991,ironically on King Records again.

On this album it seems that Egawa was influenced by his time with Earthshaker,so the sound is closer to pompous Hard Rock than Symphonic Progressive Rock.Of course there are plenty of symphonic tendencies,complicated breaks and grandiose passages and Egawa's work has a lot of similarities with the previous albums at moments.But the guitars have now a more metallic edge,the compositions are based on hard rockin' groovy rhytms,much of the keyboard work has this cheap 80's sound and the band has lost also much of its way to the epic atmospheres of the past.Another huge problems are now the vocals,especially when Fujimura tries to sing in English.While in ''Empty Lie, Empty Dream'' and ''Geard'' they were somewhat hidden under the instrumental stuff,this time they play a major role and that is a losing point,as Fujimura has one of the most cheesy and atonal voices to be heard around the prog league,the two ballads of the album are actually more funny than inetersting.Significant exceptions are the fantastic eponymous opener,which comes in a bombastic Symphonic Rock style,and the decent complex instrumental ''My Eyes to the Panic''.

The new Gerard era hasn't begun in the best way.The band with a new line-up tries to find the right steps to become solid and consistent again,but hard rockin' tunes is not the solution by any means.''Irony of fate'' contains some good moments and it might be a good album to complete your Gerard collection,but it definitely not the place to start...2.5 stars.