CEI CE NE-AU DAT NUME

"Cei Ce Ne-Au Dat Nume" is the debut full-length studio album by Romanian progressive rock act Phoenix. The album was released through Electrecord in 1972. Phoenix formed as far back as 1962 under the Sfinții (The Saints) monicker, but in 1965 they were forced by the Communist authorities to change their name to Phoenix, because of the religious leanings of their original name. Their troubles with the Ceausescu government weren´t done with the name change though. "Cei Ce Ne-Au Dat Nume" was originally meant to be a double album release, but about half the album was censored by the Communist authorities and Phoenix had to release the album with the remaining tracks as a single album release. Only a few of the censored songs have survived as most were deleted or have been lost over the years.

Stylistically the material on the album is a combination of hard rock, progressive rock, and ethnic folk rock. A few jazz-rock/fusion leanings also creep in. The vocals are pretty unassuming and a little anonymous. The Romanian language lyrics of course make it difficult for non-Romanian language speakers to understand what Phoenix are singing about, so suffice to say the vocals are there, but they leave little impact (although they are well performed and are often layered with harmony vocals or supported by choirs). The band are obvously well playing but the shell of the music is overall not that interesting. At least not the vers/chorus parts of the tracks. It´s when the band play their instrumental parts that things start to become interesting. Both the guitar solos and the busy and high in the mix bass playing are pretty great features of Phoenix music.

The sound production is decent, but it´s on the slighly amaturish end of the professional recording scale, which isn´t unusual for an early 70s sound production on an East European hard rock/progressive rock release. It´s not a major issue, but it´s not a positive either. Upon conclusion "Cei Ce Ne-Au Dat Nume" is a decent quality release from Phoenix, but unless you´re a Romanian (and therefor maybe will get more out of this understanding the lyrical content) or have some sort of nostalgic relationship with this release, the quality simply isn´t high enough across the board (songwriting, sound production, and performances) to warrant more than a 2.5 star (50%) rating.