FROM GENESIS TO REVELATION

At last, I own every album in the GENESIS catalogue. I found this record on a discount price in a record store and I couldn't stop myself from buying it. Now that I've listened to it, I don't regret my decision, even if the album is quite weak.

The music, as has been said before, is very different to what GENESIS would deliver starting with "Trespass" and on. This is pop music ,60's pop music to be correct, so it sounds very innocent, very unpretentious, very modest. All the songs are extremely short, and none of them has any long instrumental section. The sound has a little bit of folk, a little bit of hippie, and a little (very little) of psychedelic.

There are, though, some minor hints of the future band that would emerge out of this. There are moments where Banks shows he's no typical keyboard player, and sometimes the melodies (which aren't so good as those GENESIS was able to produce later on) are darker than it appears. Peter Gabriel, on the other hand, while restrained and pretty much completely relaxed, starts to give little clues here and there of the amazing frontman and singer that he would become.

But even for a pop/rock record from the 60's, most songs are weak, and the music itself lacks energy, lacks more soul. In a way, it's not good pop/rock because it doesn't feel like true, honest pop/rock. Neither does it sound, of course, like progressive-rock, not at all. So, we can say that what this album truly lacks is character. Who would imagine, saying that of a GENESIS record?

After all, it was the product of 5 very young people who still had to wait a few years to give us what they were truly capable of. To say they just got better with time is quite a monstrous understatement. Even their next album, "Trespass", is so many miles ahead of "From Genesis to Revelation" in quality that it's outstanding only one year separates one from the other.

All in all, an album that GENESIS completionists should have, even if only for filling the gap in their shelves. And don't get me wrong: after a few tries, some songs actually become quite decent ("That's Me", "Am I very Wrong", "In limbo", among a few more), so there's nothing to lose in buying this record.

And, yes, as it doesn't have "Illegal Alien", it still rates higher than 1983's "Genesis" and, as a better song collection -with no electronic drums- , than 1986's "Invisible Touch".