SKEEM

The singer/guitarist/keyboardist Serge Barbaro, born in France, breathes neo-prog and since the late 90s he can express his feelings completely in his project Skeem. That's what he does here.

His approach is thorough and effective. The musician tells his graphic designer Mark Eaton that he is looking for a lyricist to provide words to the compositions he has written. Eaton, however, climbs into the pen himself and so the material gets more shape. Eventually Barbaro recruits a number of musicians, including two additional keyboardists, to record Skeem's debut CD reviewed here.

The eight tracks, all clock about eight minutes, the album clearly shows Barbaro's vision of the progressive rock genre. Skeem brings uncomplicated neo-prog with catchy melodies and flashy solos on guitar and keys. The music comes across as a slightly more accessible Jadis, mainly because of the Gary Chandler-like guitar playing, but the lead vocals also have that comparison. What gives it his unique touch is the combination with the female background vocals.

Opener Good To One Another immediately shows what an exuberant effect those vocals have. Skeem occasionally comes up with slightly more powerful chords which, in terms of intensity, grind against hard rock. The Last Word is a good example. A beautiful interlude towards Alan Parsons Project results in a delicious finale. This piece shows that Skeem has an excellent rhythm tandem. Bassist Bertrand Hulin-Bertaud and drummer Emma M are no strangers to the scene. Both played in the fusion band Priam.

Maarten Goossensen, a reviewer at Progwereld, makes the comparison with the vocals of Ruud Stoker and he also regularly refers to the band Timelock. I can only endorse it, especially when I hear the smooth Trustworthy Man. In addition, the song in the instrumental piece contains flashbacks to the solo album "From Ignorance To Ecstacy" by Tracy Hitchings. Influences from that corner of the spectrum are regularly displayed. For example, the beautiful ballad Chrysalides has a blissful finale in Pendragon style. Marvellous. How well played.

After two reasonable, but not noteworthy songs follows What A Night, a mid-tempo ballad with a well-timed solo on the acoustic guitar. Live Fast brings us to the end to this entertaining album. It undeniably has the allure of a closing track and in the meantime a nice Kansas-like piece is involved.

Some albums need time to become brilliant. Not this one. It was an instant bingo.

Orginally posted on www.progenrock.com

This is LIGHTYEARS from their debut. I mean INCOMPARABLY BETTER than their debut. When I got it from Musea in 2001... well, being subscribed to Musea Monthly Selection I often bought pig in a poke and was never disappointed by any new and unknown Musea release, but that time I was surprised why the label with strong reputation of a worldwide progressive fashion-maker released such a collection of pompous banalities, with only 3 tracks (of 8) really containing music. Something reminding Italian Pictures (do you remember their first and only studio album from 1997?) but much less brisk. I decided for myself that I should not monitor Skeem's activity anymore because they seemed to be definitively not of my interest. And so, the deeper was my amazement when I recently listened (by chance, just by chance, I was never motivated for listening to Skeem since 2001!) to ...Just Suggesting. A splendid release, really. Only with their second album, twelve years after the debut, the band proved that they do have their own creative face. Very powerful, distinctive and inventive tracks, especially Gone Away Muse (a true masterpiece in any respect I'd say!), quite intricate album structure, great instrumentation and musicianship. The only fault of the album is its excessive duration. I'm not sure that the message to the world included in the album really does cost 100 minutes of playing time. Maybe some water might be wrung out from the musical tissue, maybe some compositions are slightly longer than they deserve to be. But what to talk about if almost every song on the band's first album was at least twice longer than it should be?

After i listen the 1st album i was just curious about the 2nd one. Skeem released their 2nd effort after 12 years, and they release 2 album. So it worth to wait so much? Sometimes yes but even no. The debut album was a masterpiece to me, excellent composition catchy chorus, and intricate solos between keys and guitar with a light fusion feelings. In this album they repeat the old formula of the 1st album: long intro about 1 minute, usually driven by a guitar solo and after this one starts the song usually is in a slow tempo, but what miss in this album is the energy from the 1st album, the final solos between guitar and keys are still there but the emotions are fade away. So to conclude 3 stars

This French project was an idea of guitarist/keyboardist/singer Serge Barbaro, who had composed some good amount of music by late-90's and eventually he found Mark Eaton, who's lyrics dressed Barbaro's compositions.The execution of these pieces would become true a few years later, when Barbaro formed Skeem with keyboardists Berny Barbaro and Fabrice Rives and bringing over the solid rhythm section of Priam, drummer Emma M. and bassist Bertrand Hulin-Bertaud.The album was recorded in Serge Barbaro's hometown, Toulouse, and it was picked up for release and distribution by Musea Records.

Skeem played a rich, melodic and often bombastic Neo Prog akin to CLEPSYDRA, IQ and JADIS, where emotions meet grandieur, music that passes through angular keyboard acrobatics to laid-back atmospheres and from expressive singing to powerful grooves.Most of the tracks feature accesible structures, big symphonic keyboards and a style drawing inspirations from the 80's British Prog movement.The marching bass lines is very close to IQ's Tim Esau, but the music is certainly less keyboard-driven despite the presence of three keyboard players.As Serge Barbaro was primarly a guitar player and all compositions are credited to him, the album appears to be nicely balanced between his interesting guitar work (sharp lead parts, strong soloing and heavier riffs) and the sometimes pompous keyboard themes, including monster solo fanfares and even huge, orchestral washes.However the result is very unoriginal and at moments pretentious with Barbaro's accented vocals being of an acquired taste.All tracks are long, easy-flowing and well-structured, despite the minimal doses of strong risks, with some very good melodies and waves of positive energy.A couple of more sensitive and relaxed pieces are thrown in for good measure, featuring more emotional vocal performances and some quite dreamy CLEPSYDRA-like keyboard lines.

This is very good Neo Prog, following the lines of the pioneer British acts of the style.Passionate singing, semi-symphonic keyboards and varied guitar work.Although struggling to come up with a sound of its own, ''Skeem'' is still an album which will be loved by fans of the genre.Recommended.

As I'm writing this review I'm listening to this album I discovered on Progstreaming. I must say I don't have any French Neo Prog bands in my collection mostly because they almost always sing in French and without learning the language it's impossible to understand what they're on about. Skeem are definitely the exception to this rule, singing in English and more importantly in an understandable fashion. As I listen to the album I hear a definite European Prog sound with hints of Marillion . The guitar work is first rate and memorable mixed with synthesizers and a competent steady drum beat and this album sits comfortably with my favorite releases of 2013. Skeen's sound is big and complete. The production values are splendid .

Skeem deliver what is on the whole a fun, diverting, but not particularly memorable neo-prog album in a fairly typical vein - a Marillion-imitating style which reminds me in parts of Clepsydra. The performances are reasonable and the compositions are alright, but there isn't quite enough bite to it to really engage me, and nor do the band manage to create a work which is really emotionally compelling. The album doesn't seem to have been made with any particular statement or aesthetic in mind beyond "let's prove to the world we can play a bit like Marillion". Sure, they can, but rote imitation isn't a skill to be proud of.

A real pitty, this could have been a 4.5 star Neo album and it fails for just one reason.

This short-lived french band plays a top-level archetypal Neo-Prog, very similar to Jadis to the point that I am tempted to say that it's a Jadis clone, not the least because Serge Barbaro guitar sounds nearly identical to Gary Chandler's and his voice is also similar, but there are also hints of IQ, Saga and other typical Neo sounds. In any case this album is in most respects every bit as good as any by the big names in the british or american Neo scene. The band sounds tight, the playing is competent, the production is very good and the composition is for the most part excellent. For the most part.

The album starts very well with "Good To One Another" which sounds very much like Jadis with a bit of Saga and "The Last Word" which has a riff more similar to the old Arena.

So far so good, but as from the third track things start to shift. "Trustworthy Man" starts again very well with a great powerful instrumental introduction, the vocal verse section is also good, but then the chorus section is pure mainstream AOR, dangerously close to something which could have been done by the Scorpions. My god what are they doing? This is too bad because then we have an excellent long instrumental middle section, but unfortunately we get again the awful chorus for ending.

As from here this becomes a recurring pattern in nearly every other song: great introduction, poppy but reasonably good verse section but then the chorus is too mainstream. We get some very good instrumental middle section and return to the verse and mainstream chorus. Only "Chysalides" escapes a bit from this description, a mid-tempo song which remains Jadis-like all the way.

So there you have it, it's only those excessively mainstream chorus sections which put me off about this album. A real shame because we have also really great sections, such as the long instrumental interplay at the end of "Live Fast". All the instrumental parts are great in fact. Sure, Jadis themselves and other Neo bands make also very melodic music and get sometimes close to mainstream, but Skeem go just that bit too far, even if only in the chorus phrases.

As I said before, the voice of Serge Barbaro is similar to Gary Chandler but better, more powerful and with more tonal range. His english pronunciation is also more than good enough. It's a very good lead voice, but it's not prog-sounding, this guy could have perfectly sung in bands like Spandau Ballet or stuff like that. Which of course makes these mainstream chorusses sound even more mainstream. Same with the double female backing vocals, they are a double-edged sword: they can give the music a nice depth, but in the mainstream sections they just make them sound even more mainstream.

There's a lot of good stuff in here and it's definitely worth the buy, it's just a pitty that for such little margin it fails to be the great album it could have been.

4 stars for Neo fans, 3 stars within Prog as a whole.

Original band from France lead by Serge Barbaro. Their style remember some hard rock band of the '80 based on synth like Europe of "Final Countdown" but progressive oriented and with a touch of fusion for the work of keyboards. In this album i don't see any Marillion and Jadis influence like someone say. I really like this album for the energy and the strong melody, but that i like much of it is the instrumental work of guitar and keyboards, both instruments are well balanced with the best instrumental performances that i've heard. The best songs are: Good to another one, Crysalides and Live Fast. The last one has one coda superb, with a duel between guitar and keyboards to decide which is the best solo! 5 full stars, highly recommended!

Skeem is a neo prog band from France relaseing so far a single album in 2001 at Musea records selftitled. This album took me by surprise, because I dind't expect to be so good. Neo prog is style of Jadis, Iq but concentrated more on vocal department but also the keyboards have an important role here. The voice is very ok in english sung, it doesn't sounds with that typical french accent, Serge Barbaro manage to come with a strong album, he is the main song writting and the chief of the band. So the music is very strong, not boring at all, very much alive with balls, up tempo with less slower moments, some fantastic keyboards arrangements make from this album a total winner and among the best neo prog album available from early '00. The music is similar with for ex Clepsydra, Jadis or to some dutch bands from same genre like Ywis or US, but Skeem done it better then any Jadis album, to tell the truth and in one album only. Pieces are long, enough to show that each musician knows the instrument pretty well, the great ex of super neo prog are :Statues, Eye Of The World and Chrysalides. A very good album from neo prog with a lot to offer, maybe little unknow, it doesn't seems to be in top this band with their album, but worth be investigated fr sure. 4 stars easy, recommended , you will have a pleasent surprise.

Delightful neo prog combo from France! I want to send my regards to Progrules who recommended me this band. I was quite surprised by their sound, very tasteful and melodic, really captivating. It took me a while to really get into this one, but when it did, I was hooked and I've heard this CD many times after. Some tracks seems to lean toward a more AOR oriented path, but that's deceptive, for the record is definitly progressive.

Skeem is mainly a project of Serge Barbaro, who plays all guitars and is a fine singer and songwriter. I loved his soaring guitar lines. The dual keyabords are a nice touch and the rhythm sectiom is precise. Some tracks are obviously better than the others, but there are no fillers here. My favorite is 9 minute prog trip Chrysalides, with its hauting keyboards lines and great guitar solos. I also should pint out the progressive ballad What a Night. Production is very good. and teh Cd is very well balanced

If you're into neo prog this is a must have. I'd love to hear more from this band. I hope Barbaro is using all this time since their debut's release to write new stuff from this little known, but very good group. Four solid stars. Excellent addition to my collection!