FROM THE ANCIENT WORLD

A few years ago I witnessed this promising new French progrock band during a progrock festival (also featuring Eclat and Quidam) in Paris. I have to admit that STL sounded a bit less convincing on stage than on their wonderful debut CD entitled Almost Human. But on the other hand the band succeeded to generate a big hand from the crowd because of their interesting progrock music, based upon fiery guitar work (with frequent use of the tremolo arm) and a passionate, almost fairy-tale-like female voice.

On the new CD From An Ancient World again those elements are very important but the music sounds more adventurous and more experimental. In general STL generates a lot of excitement on alternating and surprising compositions like 1st Movement : Ephemeral Past (lots of tension, strong vocals and howling guitar runs), the intricate 4th Movement : Ancient World (great interplay between guitar and keyboards, bombastic parts with propulsive guitar riffs, moving guitar and powerful saxophone) and the 'maverick' on this album, the instrumental 5th Movement : Epilogue (strong classical overtones with Grand piano and orchestral keyboards in the vein of early The Enid). But at other moments (subjective) STL fails to keep my attention because of too fragmentic or too experimental parts. Fortunately those moments are in the minority, in general this is a captivating and quite daring progrock album on which STL does their best to make original music.

So check out their site and listen to the samples (also on the Cyclops website) in order to make a final choice. I hope you will give this interesting new French band (with a slightly changed line-up in comparison with their first effort) the chance they deserve. My rating 3,5 stars.