MINNENSPIEL

According to theirsite, this quintet had given up their mostly medieval music by the time of their fourth album, but on this third one, there is already almost nothing medieval except for the odd hurdy-gurdy and the odd bagpipes. For the rest, we have an album that is loaded with electric guitars bad 90's-drums (played by an almost laughable dragon-killer Ulli Stotz) and its programming, bad gothic-style female German singing and a bunch of guests to thicken the sound.

So most likely, this album is ready for a bout of slandering, right? Well actually not everything is bad on this album, but you'd expect it to be recorded roughly a decade earlier (92 instead of 02) as it reeks many clichés of that era. The first few tracks exude a bit of charming ambiances that can eventually be reminiscent of Blackmore's Rainbow with a harder edge. By the fifth track, the listener is solidly bored, just hoping that the FFW on the remote control comes unstuck soon enough before your patience is up and you pop out the Cd from your deck. The light prog feeling is not really that obvious unless you relate Adaro again with BN, but there are simply too many weaknesses, the awful Min Vrouwe Is Quot epitomizes everything wrong with the album as we veer into some kind of 80's pastiche, while other tracks (like Det Schall) can remind you of Mostly Autumn and its cartload of clichés as well.

While this writer has never heard the two previous albums, he's not really apt at judging whether this group was really, really, REALLY progressive at one point, but based on this album alone, the answer would be: not really likely; They might try hard, but ultimately fail to deliver the goods, no matters how much Blackmore is a fan of them (as I've read somewhere). Ultimately the only advice I can give progheads is to get a good listen at the two previous albums instead of this one. But if BN does not frighten you, you're likely to find some kind of happiness in here as well. And Konstanze is more to my taste than Candice, but not Heather.

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