MELLODRAMATIC

While the mellotron is the quintessential prog instrument, and many British and European bands have dedicated albums to its rather direct pleasures, sometimes it seems like the poor tron never learned to swim, and could not cross the Atlantic. In America, relatively few bands bolstered their sound with mellotron, let alone dedicated whole albums to singing its praises. Yet here we have not only an American mellotron album but one named for said instrument hailing from the veritable prog coldbed of Texas. Whole melodies are played on mellotron, which alot of prog bands seem to forget is possible.

The sound on Mellodramatic is most reminiscent of King Crimson (any 70s KC) with plenty of Anglagard thrown in. Also, some Pink Floyd, Moody Blues, ELP (when the organ takes over) and various proto prog influences can be discerned. It certainly cannot be argued that this is original music, but it does try to be, and succeeds in being pretty entertaining in the process, and that counts for something. One flaw is that it is skewed a bit too much to the instrumental side, especially later on, which makes it seem that the group had a few big ideas and then filled out the album with jamming from there. "The Pioneer" , "King of The Skies" and "The City and the Sea" demonstrate the best of the group. The latter contains a monster sequence that is so familiar sounding, and the music is not credited to any band member, so perhaps it does belong to someone else. I keep coming up Fleetwood Mac or Foreigner when I try hard to figure it out, so I guess it's back to the drawing board!

So a pretty decent album by an inexperienced but skilled group that needs to develop a bit more of its own sound, assuming it is not already dead wood.