F4I3LESSE

This French band plays a guitar driven brand of prog that is often quite heavy with pastoral passages scattered throughout for contrast. There are three instrumental tracks although vocals are used sparingly on the rest of the songs, and are sung in both French and English.The first half of this album is especially strong making me think that we might have a masterpiece here, but the second half is not nearly as amazing.

"Faiblesse" really kicks in after a minute and a half of calm and does it ever remind me of ANEKDOTEN ! The angular guitar, heavy drums and bass is amazing. This song and "Queen Wilson" are my favourites. "Os" opens with organ and there are female vocals.The mellow is again contrasted with the noisy and they let it rip 3 minute in. This sounds like an Alternative Rock song. Heavy ! "Queen Wilson" is an instrumental and check out the drumming and thumping bass.Things get quiet as we can hear the waves of mellotron slowly and softly move.The mellotron starts to build slowly as drums,guitar and bass come in. I'm in heaven at this point. "Marie J." has some great heavy guitar and the drumming is all over the place.There is a long, beautiful guitar solo followed by vocals.

"Vicious Heart" opens with reserved vocals in a tranquil soundscape that changes 3 minutes in to a beautiful straight-forward, catchy song with organ and a blistering guitar solo. "En Depit" is a heavy song as the guitarist fires off a couple of blazing solos.This is heavy duty music. "Spare Yourself The Pain" is a short, mellow 2 minute song with classical guitar. "The Taste Of You" has some great bass in it. The song kicks in around the 2 minute mark to an intense, heavy melody. The song softens later as we are treated to some delicate guitar. Just a warning about the lyrics on this one. Yikes ! "Ma Devise" slowly builds in volume and we get some mellotron as well. The song ends with a great and tasteful guitar solo. "Loe" is a long instrumental of two acoustic guitar melodies with drums.This ones a little tough to get into. "Acore" is another instrumental only better as bombastic passages come and go with some fantastic guitar. "Ile" is a short song with fragile vocals and classical guitar. "Dying For Religion" has this guitar melody that reminds me of OCEANSIZE. The vocals come in as the song becomes mellow. Some drums come in and the guitar is close behind. This one gets heavy to close it out.

This one I can readily recommend to those who like lots of guitar and don't mind a little complexity.