GERALD MASSOIS

1. "1939" (3:01) a wonderful, beautifully-composed and -rendered classically-imbued symphonic opener. (9.5/10)

2. "Les ennemis d'hier" (4:33) powerful prog that sounds like a combination of LAZULI, NEMO, and a pinch of the Maurin brothers. (8.875/10)

3. "La bataille de l'Ebre Pt. 1" (5:22) great opening that turns ALCESTian but then more NEMO or RIVERSIDE. Too bad it's all within the confines of a tightly proscribed ascending chord progression (though, thankfully, not the "chorus" section). (8.75/10)

4. "La bataille de l'Ebre Pt. 2" (10:41) the careful, almost meticulous two-minute mathematical piano and vocal intro unleashes a heavily-power-chord-accented piano concerto until 4:25 when everybody backs off in lieu of some romantic piano chords backing Gérald's lead guitar soloing. "Piano virtuoso" Gionatan Carradona's sound and performance are captured quite well. In the middle of the seventh minute the music turns piano-less with some drum and bass supporting Gérald's vocal before his electric guitar's power chords resume and some "strings" enter to support some more guitar and then piano soloing. (18/20)

5. "Les trains d'ombres" (5:51) a song that plods along like so many of the NEMO songs that I used to tire of. The musicianship is fine, the sound palette a little abrasive, but the song lacks the "warmth" and inviting space for engagement--the walls of sound almost pushing me back and away. (8.6667/10)

6. "Une colline sans nom" (14:32) interesting start with a rhythm track that wants to suck you in but then the barrage of guitars and synths (especially after the first 90-seconds). I never expected this long song to be an instrumental, but the first half contains absolutely no lyrics much less singing! There is some fine prog rock here--quite dynamic with lots of twists and turns--including the one at 8:45 which turns into an classical acoustic guitar-based motif with synth "strings" washes for accompaniment and human whistling serving as the lead melody maker until 10:15 when the full band kicks back in and Nicolas Garcdel's synths take over. The Paul SPEER-like guitar returns at 11:25 to carry the main melody forward (almost ad nauseum) for a full two-minutes before he unleashes an impressive solo in the fourteenth minute, taking us right to the end of the song. Quite a solid, interesting, and entertaining song. (27/30)

7. "L'encre des maux" (4:46) a steel-stringed acoustic guitar strumming along with Gérald's vocal. It sounds a bit like a cross between TOM PETTY, DAVID BOWIE, and LOVE AND ROCKETS. (8.875/10)

8. "Demain à l'aube" (13:39) opens with 2:25 of some very pensive cinematic chamber music that has cello and piano in the fore while well-rendered synth "strings" accompany from behind. Then we're left with piano accompanying Gérald in a wonderful vocal performance: using a frail, fragile voice to slowly, very deliberately deliver a MARCO GLÜHMANN-like melody and sound. At 4:45 the fully "orchestrated" band steps up to back and then take over the music. Okay, so Gérald finally softens and changes the sound of his electric guitar's power chords (something I've been hoping/longing for since the second song). At 6:30 the music takes a turn down a more dynamic country road in which Hammond organ and guitar weave in and around each other without either really claiming the lead: both contributing detailed, precision-based playing before a synth comes in to join their weave. In the ninth minute everybody congeals into a more even-keeled, standard-tempoed motif for Gérald to return to singing (even multi- tracking his voice for some b vox). This is the first time on this album that I've been truly reminded of the classic prog band ANGE that several other reviewers seem to hear in Gérald's music. Swirling Hammond chords and angular guitar riffs next help to bridge the way to a powerful DAVID GILMOUR-like motif that starts at 10:25. This will be prog heaven for most progheads! Especially when he triples his speed in thirteenth minute. The music then devolves into a cello-led revisitation to the opening soundscape for the final 30-seconds. This is probably the best song on the album-- definitely the best epic. (28/30)

9. "Les passagers du vent" (5:14) strummed acoustic guitar, piano chords, and Gérald singing. In the third minute a multi-track vocal chorus leads into a STEVEN WILSON-like instrumental passage that unleashes another nice Gérald Massois electric guitar solo starting at 3:30--one that plays out through a long fade out to the song's end. (9/10)

Total Time: 66:39

Great sound applied to some very nice if-sometimes defined and confining compositions. I wish Gérald's power chords had used some variation in both sounds and volume but they always seem to be the exact same in every song. Also, Maxx Gillard's proficient drum performance is weakened to my ears/brain from it's high-pitched "plastic" reverb/echo sound and slightly-high volume. I guess I kept hoping for some looser, more-spacious and not so contrived and controlled feeling in the music. The symphonic aspect of Gérald's compositions are wonderful; it's the almost-suffocating lack of room for improvisation and spontaneity that makes me squirm a little uncomfortably.

A-/five stars; a minor masterpiece of modern progressive rock of the heavy-symphonic kind (think of MYSTERY or SYLVAN). Highly recommended to all those prog lovers who prefer their music a little heavier and emotional.

"1939" with the symphonic intro, cinematic air and its dark strings, acoustic guitar and solemn piano, we are in it ready to face this damn war. "The enemies of yesterday" introduces the story unfolding a melodic, energetic prog metal with a beautiful languorous guitar solo; sound passing to symphonic hard-prog with a song made in France that will have to be adopted under penalty of blocking, always this more French and this less because of the understanding. "La bataille de l'Ebre PT1" follows, long instrumental with the guitar and drums in front, Nicolas's captivating keyboard can approach the sound of Léode des LAZULI, that is to say, immense also because the reminiscences on the great DREAM THEATER come to light. "La bataille de l'Ebre PT2" a capella piano with Gerald narrating the departure: 2 minutes for a high-flying progressive space, Gionatan keyboard of majestic PROFUSION, very jazzy-proggy with an emphatic sound. DREAM THEATER, Neal MORSE, on boosted JPL with less space on the voice, more musicality. The vocal phrasing mode explaining the horrors of war and the music back and forth on doubts and advances. A melancholic French prog mode with spleen, metal and playful progressive excursions; a point to explain the similarity with JPL for these enjoyable excursions and the typical voice that can slow down the musical journey, yes it is difficult to sing in our language. "Les trains d'ombres" arrives, smelling good because of the voice the melancholic songs of a certain CHRISTOPHE who would have chosen rock rather than pop. The melancholy of the title with the moving side leering at Death, the grandiloquent final crescendo which 'finally' gives French prog rock its letters of nobility flirting with the intimate and the meditative aspect.

"Une colline sans nom" in instrumental facsimile of 'La Bataille de l'Ebre' for its drifts, between hooks and progressive variations. A typical Breton sound coming from a zither, lute, hang, in short a Hispanic vibration inviting you to travel. The symphonic side put forward that we would like to keep until the end; the wild guitar break in stereo then the keyboard à la RUDESS or SHERINIAN choose. This title brightens up even more before settling again on a wind, a guitar arpeggio, sad beauty of Pierre-Emmanuel in action. Back to the original sound with the guitar solo and the spleen on all floors and the drums typical of a Saturday night ball where Hervé, a fan of prog before his time, passed by; the final vibration at the bottom of the trench. "L'encre des maux" with the explanation of the writings of the future shot, an acoustic on cloying and cruel words, is it better to know in French or hide these words in English? It looks at the famous Floydian 'Wish you' and it is worth it for the anthem of remembrance. "Demain à l'aube" eponymous with the sad intro of the cello announcing an imminent death; a calm space before the storm of bullets, a solemn piece where the voice here blends behind the piano. The voice rises and passes more easily, integrating into the musical framework as it goes. Drama, more emotion with the instruments highlighted, guitar and distorted Hammond putting on a show and giving it the finger to death. One of the brothers is going to die, the music then imposes itself with the rhythmic bass, the syncopated drums to trace a delightful harmonic line. The best thing about this album is the musical emotion that emerges from it, I repeat myself; the cello coming to die in the end like an endless wave. "Les passagers du vent" final title, melancholy in mid-tempo for the memory that remains. A contemplative ballad with Gérald whom I have not often named playing a last beautiful solo, drowned by a last eternal wave.

Gérald MASSOIS dares the French concept album par excellence! origin on PROFILPROG.

Ending on April 1st "1939", marking the end of the Civil War, the shattered protagonist returns home to his family, unsure of the new world dawning, a mere few months before Hitler invades Poland and thus igniting the massive conflict that spanned the globe. The orchestral overture is appropriately sombre, depressing and a harbinger of the continued horrors to come. Nicolas Gardel's composition is deferentially orchestrated as if a soundtrack of some imaginary movie.

The poignant "Les Ennemis d'hier" (Yesterday's enemies) is the immediate social consequence of any civil war, where once harmonious brothers, neighbours and friends become locked in ruthless combat, further compounded by the survivors having to once again learn to live with each other. The outcome of victory and defeat is forever blurred and internalized. The music is gritty, electric guitars sizzling in between the piano embers, the tragic bass begging for peace and the pounding drums, reminders of the ongoing echoes of cannon fire. Gérald's beseeching voice displays a passion that cannot surrender, as hope is reduced to nothingness, yet the spirit must fight on, naked and defiant.

The two-part ''La Bataille de l'Ébre'' (the Battle of the Ebro River) spans 16 minutes and forms the core grisliness of the album's concept. Swooping salvos from the instrumental artillery, the thunder of thousands of charging rifles running straight into deadly gunfire, lurid bayonet assaults, Condor Legion bombings from the skies and no prisoners taken. "No Pasaran"! Part 2 is the silent after the carnage, where the reflection on the absurdities of war become overbearing, a subject I have studied since my teenage years, still without comprehending this primeval need to kill with such devotion and disregard. The Massois electric guitar combines in complete agreement with Carradona's virtuoso piano, a colossal display of sound and fury, as walls collapse under the senseless concussions, limbs shredded, brains splattered, the horrid odour of death everywhere and seared forever in any survivor's soul. Definitely hell on earth. The ominous lyrics are descriptive of the agony suffered by all.

As our dejected hero voyages back to his family home, "Les Trains D'ombres" (Trains of Shadows) project unfurling images of shallow desperation, travelling on the rails of troubled hope, departing from nowhere to remember to arriving somewhere forgotten. This piece is a melancholic journey not for the faint of heart, as the massive choirs weep with unrelenting anguish, a mother's loving embrace at the end of the line.

Nightmares remain forever engrained, impossible to flush, as vile flashbacks bully into the routine reality of having to cope with trauma. This sentiment is expertly expressed on the profound instrumental revisit of the battlefield on the 14 minute + "Une Colline sans Nom" (a Hill with No Name), a harrowing tempest of evil pain and intense suffering, that exudes all those images one would wish to supress but ultimately can't. One can decide not to fight but one cannot decide to forget. Musically, its rhythmically explosive, with tortured shards of barbed-wire guitar slicing through tissue, and overarching keyboard disconsolateness, as an acoustic guitar paints the breeze that whistles over the graves of the fallen. Absolutely magnificent composition, that needed no words.

Adding even further tragedy, the protagonist finds out that his brother who was forcibly enrolled in the Franquist army, eventually deserting and subsequently tried and executed. "L'Encre des Maux"(the ink of pain) is a moment of sweet remembrance towards his fallen sibling , putting to pen his deepest emotions and memories , as fate had sullied the tears of our existence. 'Your face vanishes into the folds of time'. Many decades later, the second letter is the surviving hero's last testament before joining his brother beyond the veil, as his time has now come, finally together again, as one. The grandiose title track 'Tomorrow at Dawn' is a fitting tribute to the story, offering eternal finality and respect to those who have died and those who survived, brothers in arms. Without guilt, accepting one's fate better to die on your feet than live on your knees. Bellowing agony oozes from the plaintive electric guitar, as it scours the deepest sensitivities, a sense of uncomfortably numb, of the wall of internal imprisonment crumbling into rubble, where liberation, panacea, freedom and the finality of resting in peace meet in complete harmony.

Serving as an ideal lullaby-like epilogue, "Les Passagers du Vent" (Passengers on the Wind) depicts the other side, definitely not the dark one, where the great Veil awaits, expiating and forgiving all our injuries, offering to leave behind a battered and tired body and walking into that celestial train station that will takes us all to a promised land. The palpable honesty in Gérald's voice is just plain beautiful.

Gérald Massois has produced a highly meritorious album that will go down as a 'chef-d'oeuvre' of its kind, a true progressive adventure, where both musicality and literary depth combine to tell a rousing story of the human condition, a subject that will never grow old. The sounds are impeccable and the words profound and existential. I suggest getting a translation should you wish to imbibe into the material, is available on Gerald's website www.geraldmassois.com

5 Sunrise mornings