SPARTACUS

The Rumblin Orchestra is a Hungarian musical project with Ella Bela (keyboards/vocals) as the musical brainchild. The subject for this album is the known story about the heroic slave who's life ended so tragically after he had organized a revolution against the Romans, Kirk Douglas played a perfect role in the Sixties movie version that featured lots of action and bombastic moments. Well, this has been translated in a very pleasant way into the music on Spartacus: many fluent up-tempo songs and bombastic climates delivering a choir and lots of flashy synthesizer soli, evoking Keith Emerson during Fanfare For The Common Man. Because of the use of classical instruments like the flute, cello, trombone and violin, the music also reminds me of early solo Rick Wakeman while the work on paino and synthesizers has echoes from Triumvirat. Although Rumblin Orchestra their sound is modern and a bit polished, I was pleased with lots of interesting interludes and breaks. Guitarist Janos Varga (from legendary Hungarian progrock band East) appears as a guest musician in the track Vitory Of Death, he delivers two biting soli. The bonus-track is a live version (10 minutes) of America (The Nice) tha tcontains a modern keyboard sound and trumpet. A fine album with lots of variety and strong keyboard work, my rating is 3,5 stars.