BABYLON

In my opinion Babylon is one of the better US prog bands, on a similar lever to bands such as Chakra, Happy the Man, Mithrandir, Relayer, and Starcastle. Like many of these bands, Babylon's similarity to Yes is strong (however this could always be chalked up to the question of "Do most prog rock bands sound like Yes? Or does Yes sound like most prog bands?"), although some instrumental element and thematic elements seem more akin to Peter Gabriel era Genesis. The vocal elements are very heavily stylized, a bit to stylized for my taste, but I could understand how one could enjoy them. The lyrics are often over the top and ironic, such as "Dreamfish" in which humanity is overrun by vengeful fish who seek retribution for humanity cooking and eating them. The rhythmic qualities of this album are all over the place, with many time signature and tempo changes, it's almost to an absurd degree and I love it. Love the keyboards, quite fond of the ARP Omni, although there are occasional moments were the guitar and synth combo may get a bit overwhelming for some, I personally enjoy it, and I think that effect was the bands intention. Not quite the perfect album but really good, 4.4/5.

Could they be the US equivalent of Genesis, if they lasted? Hmmm, sounds like it! Here is my track-by-track opinion:

The Mote in God's Eye: Oh, these guys know how to play, and the singer sure knows how to sing! A composition straight out of Genesis' 'Foxtrot', theatrical and illusive, a promising start!

Before the Fall: Chaotic composition that does not find a solid footing at any point, so despite its individual good ideas, it does not stand very well as a whole. However, the performance of drummer Rodney Best, who shows great prog skills, is noteworthy!

Dreamfish: Constantly alternating rhythms and meters that not only get followed by the singer, but actually give him the ground for a really difficult and admirable performance in the few parts he participates. On the other hand, when I listen to such complex songs, I have the feeling that this is done deliberately at the expense of the musicianship. It's something that personally does not appeal to me. You don't need to tie the instruments in a knot to play progressive... Relax a little, guys!

Cathedral of the Mary Ruin: Here we have early Genesis with a small dose of prime Eloy. Its calm parts are very beautiful indeed, and a smoother structure would flatter the piece much more. The Genesis of "The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway" could do wonders with a composition like this, "fixing" it where needed, to level up. It is remarkable that it lasts over 7 minutes, but you don't feel that there are less important parts, the entire piece have something to give. It's worthy of the attention of the genre's fans!

Rating:

An album like this should get 3 stars. The whole band is musically skilled, the singer is theatrical and appropriate for the genre, and the level of the compositions will attract the attention of "complex" prog fans. It's not so much to my taste, but I can sense its quality. Too bad they didn't continue!

One of the intresting late'70s progressive rock bands from USA were for sure Babylon. Even they had a short career disbanded in 1979, their self titled album from 1978 is very solid and enjoyble. Influenced from bands like Genesis, Gentle Giant , Hands, Yezda Urfa, among others. The great musicianship save this band to be anonymous, and is well known somehow in prog circles, specially after the album was released on CD by famous Greg Walker's Syn-Phonic label in 1999. Analogue keyboards, top guitars and quite good and intresting vocals recalling Gabriel Nursery cryme era. All 4 pieces are more then ok, symphonic prog bordering in many places early neo prog sound who just take shape around that time in other part of the world - UK, being even similar with canadians Nightwinds and their album from 1979. So, all in all a great one and done release from USA late 70s prog scene. Easy 4 stars

One of the few examples of progressive rock emerging out of the Tampa Bay area of Florida which would become more famous for the explosion of death metal bands in the following decade. BABYLON formed in 1976 and played together only three years and released this eponymous album in 1978 and like many prog bands of the late 70s saw diminishing returns in this type of music being drowned out by angry punkers and disco balls in roller skating rinks and called it a day. They left behind this one album that sounds something like a lost Genesis album from the days between "Nursery Crime" and "Foxtrot." Doroccas does his best Gabriel impression and the rest of the band pay tribute to the most aggressive aspects of early Genesis while maintaining the pastoral "Trespass" type sound as well.

Although the liner notes claim Van Der Graaf Generator, Gentle Giant, King Crimson and others as sources for inspiration and to be fair there are other influences to a lesser degree, it is really something of an early neo-prog album to my ears being almost exclusively dedicated to Genesis worship, but what a pleasant stroll down the musical memories of yesteryear this one is. All four tracks are lengthy clocking in at over 7 minutes and the delivery is some of the most seriously delicious prog frenzies as textured keyboards layer moods and time signatures bombastically feed the serious demoralized prog lover of the days when their favorite bands were incrementally fleeing financial hegira and commingling with the pop world.

It is so true that this is hardly the most original music in the world but it is just beautifully played from beginning to end and if you count this as proto-neo-prog, albeit fairly complex then it fits right in with what Pallas, Twelfth Night, IQ and Marillion would pick up a few years down the road. Personally i find Genesis very hit and miss and actually prefer the bands they inspired in many cases over their very own output and this beautiful BABYLON album scratches the itch for theatrical pompousness that Genesis was famous for but smooth it over with slightly more suave vocals and more complex and virtuosic musical accompaniment.

This is the album Genesis might have made if they had stuck to their earlier formula but as we all know they were always eager to invent a new sound and then move on to other musical arenas leaving ideas and musical worlds that needed further development. BABYLON took full advantage of this era of musical ideas and ran away with them and like many prog bands of the day who saw no future in it condenses an entire musical career into one album. A very satisfying album that i really love to spin lately although it's not quite inventive enough to earn more than four stars. My copy has the newer album cover which replaced the grey human with a grey alien and its blackened oval eyes.

As Hifi-klubben says: "Bad sound kills great music".

This is a live recording that has the same quality as you would get if you recorded a concert with a telephone, standing in the audience. The sound quality is on a level that this album should never have been released at all. I can understand why this is released though, it's a long lost band that only released one proper album and here they are with a live recording, for the archives. It should have a warning sign on the cover "beware, bad soundquality".

The LP release is otherwise really good, lots of extra goodies thrown in. A nice booklet with pictures of the band, lyrics and with a japanese obi.

If you can get past the awful sound quality, it's easy to hear how great this band really was. The songs are long and have all the signatures of great music, great melodies, great chops and lots of twists and turns. Two songs that I was not familiar with before turned out to be really great composition-wise. The band have all the marks of fellow north american bands like Pentwater, Mirthrander etc with a very heavy leaning towards Genesis.

The music: great! The sound: awful!

Decide for yourself.

Babylon hailed from Central Florida and were found by a bunch of musicians, influenced by the likes of Genesis and Happy The Man, these were lead singer Doroccus, guitarist David Boyko, drummer Rodney Best, keyboardist Gary Chambers and bassist Rick Leonard.All came from local area groups and upon their formation they played live with strong theatrical colors and multi-image projectors.They recorded their only album in the fall of 1977 at Studios 70.This was released the next year on the unknown Mehum label, propably connected with the group's members.

Babylon played a theatrical Progressive Rock exactly on the thin line between the fading Classic Symphonic Rock of the 70's and the upcoming British movement of Neo Prog.They do sound extremely close to compatriots NORTH STAR and British veterans IQ first steps, where the huge analog sound has been replaced by the constant use of synthesizers.However, stylistically the album is strongly rooted in the old GENESIS approach, featuring four long, symphonic tracks with expressive vocals and notable keyboard textures with some smooth guitar playing around.Moreover the music alternates between pompous, instrumental moves and more laid-back, almost romantic soundscapes with melodic synthesizer lines and mellow electric guitars.Some complex themes are still in the menu with extreme, dual keyboard acrobatics and impressive Classical-influenced interludes.Doroccus' sounds a lot like another PETER GABRIEL-wannabe, yet his voice is very charming and pleasant to the ear.While GENESIS seem Babylon's most apparent influence, there are also these dual keyboard experiments, that flirt with the sound of HAPPY THE MAN, which is the only US band I recall when listening to Babylon.

Very good Symphonic Rock, certainly against the trend of the time.Not original, not groundbreaking, but very enjoyable, passionate and well-executed.Strongly recommended...3.5 stars.

(This is the end of my review, please find the opening part on the Babylon - Night Over Never page if you're interested)

A propos! Another thing that should not be forgotten! (Before shaming the Live At The Empty Keg dilogy for bad sound quality.) The band released only one studio album. It contains 4 tracks. All the four were played live and are included in the Empty Keg dilogy. Apart from them, there are SIX more tracks here, never recorded in studio and available only in live versions: You Are Sentenced To Life On Earth, Ultima Thule (on Night Over Never), St. Vitus Dance, Spin, Foam Rubber Philosopher and Forest Of Orelse (on Better Conditions For The Dead). None of the six is available anywhere else. And their total running time is almost 46 minutes, in other words, if recorded in studio they would stuff another full length album. And, what is more, all the six are really great musically. I encourage the audience again to forget about the bad sound as much as possible, and enjoy the amazing music.

I think it's irresponsible to rate a prog album basing on its sound quality. Yes good sound is always more than wanted, but, on the other hand, to be precise, we appreciate a work of music, not a release. Otherwise (for example) Foxtrot by Genesis should be rated 4.5 to 5 for the 1st US press on pink scroll Charisma, 2 to 2.5 for the UK orig and 3 to 3.5 for the Japanese vinyl pressings and some CD versions. It would be absurd, admit it. Yes the sound quality of the only (at least to my knowledge) available live recording by the classic US prog band Babylon is a sort of cauchemar. If compared to the quality of the live recordings by (exempli gratia) Dream Theater. But it's nevertheless OK enough to clearly discern the details of arrangement, instrumentation, musicianship etc. Of course the music is TOO good to put up with the low sound quality. But don't forget, this recording plus the band's first and only studio album is ALL we have. That's all that Babylon left behind. So, I think we have no reason to pick and choose. As for me, I forget about the bad sound (as much as possible) and enjoy the amazing music.

Along with Starcastle, Babylon often get brought up as "a band that sounds like Yes." While this is certainly true, it's also a bit unfair-while Babylon has a lot of obvious Yes influences, they also have a great sound in and of themselves. Their single album, while certainly flawed, is also an awesome time-capsule of late 70s prog: certainly influenced by those that came before but also pushing ahead. If you're a fan of Yes and want to hear some relative contemporaries who were influenced by them then this is a great album for you. If, however, you're sick of bands who sound too much like classic-era Yes, you may wish to look elsewhere.

"The Mote In God's Eye" gets the album off to a bit of a slow start, with extremely minimalistic keyboards and a bit of percussion serving as the entirety of the music behind some slightly monotone vocals. This opening section of the song is extremely sparse, but it still kind of works, though it does go on a bit long. When the song really picks up, however, is about 3 minutes in, as the instrumentation fills out, the tempo picks up, and the music begins to sound almost scarily similar to Yes. Again, this isn't a bad thing; I personally have no problems with bands that sound like other bands. However, the similarity is quite astounding, with most of the instrumental music on the back half of the track sounding to me like it could have come straight off of Tales for Topographic Oceans. "The Mote In God's Eye" isn't a bad song at all, but I will admit that it's probably my least favorite of the 4 tracks that make up this album.

Unlike "The Mote In God's Eye," "Before the Fall" starts off amazingly. Immediately launching into a mysterious, psychedelic keyboard melody, the vocals are great here as well, with a lot of very good use of harmony. The extreme Yes influence of the previous track is mostly gone here as well; though there are some similarities in the synth parts it certainly doesn't come off as clone-like. Like "The Mote In God's Eye," this track is heavily keyboard-led, with several great solos appearing in the instrumental middle section of this track and towards the end as well. Especially notable is an awesome major-key reprise of the first motif that really pulls the whole song together. "Before the Fall" is a great track and if the whole album was this good it would likely be a 5-star disk.

"Dreamfish" more or less ventures back into Yes territory, with the vocals especially sounding more like Yes on this track then they have on either of the previous two. "Dreamfish" on the whole is more uptempo and overall more frenetic than the minimal "The Mote?" and the somewhat slower "Before the Fall," with the vocals practically delivered at auctioneer speed and the music equally as energetic. Even when the motif changes midway through the track it doesn't lose any steam-I'm amazed the vocalist can even breathe with how fast he's spitting out lyrics. There's a decent amount of ELP influence here as well, especially in a lot of the instrumentation, and the sheer ability of the musicians here makes me wonder what could have come of this band had they released more than one album.

"Cathedral of the Mary Ruin" finishes off this self-titled album. Beginning with a very rhythmically complex series of keyboard parts, the track calms down a bit for a dreamier vocal section which is followed by some absolutely gorgeous piano playing. The track picks up again with about 2 minutes left in the song to launch into a bombastic, ELP-esque series of solos that eventually give way to the vocals again. Unfortunately, I don't think "Cathedral of the Mary Ruin" finishes rather weakly, just kind of fading out without any real sense of resolution. I don't have a problem with the fade-out ending, but this one doesn't resolve very well and it's a little underwhelming, especially for the last track.

Personally, I find this album very enjoyable. There's enough Yes sound to be an interesting listen from an historical perspective, not to mention that for the most part the music is pretty darn good in its own right. Definitely not the most original release but still a great listen and a bit of a lost gem from the late 70s.

4/5

A Landmark of an Epoch

In 1975 Neu!, one of the reference Krautrock bands, recorded their third LP which included two tracks that added screeching vocals to their habitual guitar/drums metronomic sound. This would provide the backbone for a new back-to-roots musical movement in Britain that aimed pretty much at the opposite of progressive rock, a truly cultural regression. The irreverence and novelty of Punk Rock was so appealing to record companies that they soon forgot about other forms of music. As a parenthesis it should be noted that this did not impacted Progressive music alone, the break-out of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal was delayed 3 to 4 years because of this obsession with Punk. Some established Progressive bands where able to pursue their ways for a few more years, but for new bands there simply wasn't space; Progressive music entered its Dark Ages.

Elsewhere this wasn't the case and while in Britain Prog was coming to an halt, by the second half of the 1970s in other places new bands where emerging. In France, for instance, there were groups like Shylock or Pentacle, in Germany there were bands like Novalis, in Portugal there was Tantra. And in the United States Progressive music was only now really taking off, with a multitude of musically exquisite bands coming to be at different places, Happy The Man, Earth & Fire, Mirthandir, to name a few. All these bands have in common the fact that they show up after the initial phase of Progressive music that lived up much from the first contact with new technologies by popular artists. That phase of experimentation was done with and hence Progressive music was by now much more an Art-by-the-Art thing than anything else. The technology itself was evolving with the introduction of new synthesizers; most of these bands didn't use the Mini-Moog, the Hammond and scarcely the Mellotron, which even when it appears was now much smoother. Guitars were used mostly as lead instruments, rarely appearing with rhythmic functions and now with much smoother and defined tones. In terms of recording there is also a clear evolution from just 4 or 5 years earlier; high quality recordings become more of a norm than an exception. These bands, though largely unknown, produced a further step in Progressive music, bridging the early 1970s dawn to the Neo-Prog in the 1980s.

The Album

The first, eponymous and last album by Babylon is to me a quintessential work of this epoch. It certainly owes much to the Progressive precursors, especially Steve Hackett (yes more him than Genesis itself) but at the same time achieving a distinctive sound, even distinct among it's late 1970s peers. This comes first and foremost from a pretentious vocalist, whom doesn't waste a single opportunity for a theatrical performance. To flamboyant vocals add unconventional lyrics, whose literary quality I'll leave for a native English speaker to assess; love it or loath it, this combination of vocals and lyrics certainly adds something else to the music. And a second distinctive element of Babylon's sound is the drumming, well above average for a rock band and much closer to jazz, easily creating variate temporal textures that promote the complexity and the overall richness of the music.

There isn't much point in differentiating between individual tracks, I have pretty much the same to say about each. Complex compositions that travel across many different moments, with swift directional changes that are very well accomplished. The listener is totally engaged, always looking for what may come ahead. There are moments where only one instrument provides a footing melody (mostly the guitar) while all the others improvise around it, in a jazz-over-symph mixture that's really sweet to the hears. But while going at great lengths on improvisation the band always manages to keep focus, either by swiftly evolving to a more solid melody or by introducing a tempo intermission that resets the overall musical direction. And this goes on for the full four tracks of the album, building to a very solid recording that is greatly appealing as an ensemble.

Invariably, bands like Babylon had an early end to their careers. With the pressure from Punk on the one side and the 1980 Economic crisis on the other, record deals were nowhere to find. The creation of MTV in 1982 brought the final blow to those that might still have been standing at the time.

The Veredict

Babylon is a record that manages to be greatly complex but engaging at the same time, which by itself is a major achievement. Adding to this is the overall balance of the recording, its just plain good, there are no week moments to point out, thus producing an LP that is enjoyable in its entirety. I have no doubt in classifying this record as a Masterpiece, not only for its pure quality but also for being a reference of a musical epoch. There's always some discomfort in classifying a record well above the Comunity'a average, but I believe this comes from the unusual complexity of this LP, which requires a good deal of attentive listening before it can be fully enjoyed. Perhaps Babylon just needs a bit more of attention.