EON

When a band finds a sure-fire groove in their playing, they can follow at least one of two possible paths: embellish and strengthen its impact by shifting of temper and meter, or simply ride it to exhaustion. Unfortunately, the latter choice was made by Annalist on "Eon". Perhaps this is a case in which one needs to be fluent in Polish, but when I listen to "Eon", I find myself in awe of the simple yet haunting quality at one moment and wishing I could shake these guys out of their stupor the next.

As is often true on monotonous albums, the first few tracks provide an essential synopsis of the proceedings, which in this case include mellow plucked electric guitars; samey atmospheric keyboards; little distinction between oratorial verse and chorus; and excruciatingly slow tempos. While this works well enough at first - and I do believe the initial 2 songs are also slightly fresher anyway - rigor mortis sets in quickly. A tangible pickup occurs on tracks 5-7 in which guitars are played with more intensity if hardly more variation, but the rest of the album mostly repeats the pattern poorly. Even occasional shifts into ambient and bluesy space rock a la JANE are unconvincing and too little too late.

A major step down from "Artemis", "Eon" holds the promise of a well conceived and evolved work, but ultimately seems to take a billion years to go a very short distance.