AN IROSMIC TRAGEDY

Alms is a Prog-Rock project created by Spanish multi-instrumentalist Aitor Lucena Martinez. An Irosmic Tragedy is a concept album representing the phases of life, namely childhood, adulthood and elderhood structured in three tracks and 42 minutes in length.

The three tracks have a mixture of Spanish and English words and lyrics. Aitor is certainly a talented multi-musician. The tracks are very classically oriented, which okay with me as I am rather partial to classical music. Aitor says he has been strongly influenced by the likes of Genesis, ELP, Gentle Giant, Mike Oldfield and Pink Floyd and it certainly reflects that in this album.

Musically the three tracks are very similar in their sound and structure with long instrumental parts with sporadic lyrics or spoken words. Unfortunately I heard nothing in this album which excited me to recommend it and I still don't know what "Irosmic" means!

For my first review for Prog Archives, I wanted to start with the album which, for me, is the best 2016 Prog album so far.

"An Irosmic Tragedy" is a Sympho-Prog concept album divided into three tracks (though it is, in fact, one long suite) in which Alms, Aitor Lucena's alter ego, reflects about life from an existentialist and very interesting point of view. He takes us to a journey through childhood ("U'ula"), adulthood ("Tapwala") and elderhood ("Doginala") in which questions and answers intertwine in the dialogue between himself and Life (a role played by the quite suggestive female voice of Noelia Fernandez). The lyrics are intellectually rich though they appear only sporadically, and they contain extracts from Dante's "Comedy" in Italian and Calderon's "Life is a dream" in Spanish, as well as Lucena's own lyrics in English. In all its complexity and grandiloquence, we could say this is a really ambitious Prog Opera.

When it comes to music, this album reminds me of the best years of Prog, and that's something I can't find in most of nowadays bands and musicians. Alms uses a huge instrumentation which creates a perfect symbiosis between a classic rock sound and epic orchestral passages. Everything in "An Irosmic Tragedy" is dynamic and eclectic, with frantic rhythmic patterns, melodies in constant change and odd musical developments which end in evoking atmospheres, or medieval melodies, or folkie tunes... As in "Beyond", his debut album, the music captures your attention from start to finish, and that's something quite hard for an almost entirely instrumental album.

Though Aitor is the leader of this project, he counted on some collaborators to record this album, and all of them are excellent at their instruments. All of them complement each other to make a solid work with a beautiful vintage sound that will delight classic Prog fans.