SOUND OF THE APOCALYPSE

I honestly feel blessed. This is a band I just happened to come across by incident, and they instantly took a place on my top-5 list of favourite bands for the moment. Even though these young lads are men of my country, they are pretty unknown and anonymous around here. These are the guys that sound like they traveled from the 70's in a time machine, along with their equipment, to treat us with the art of true music making. That's why I feel blessed... A group of people that takes this kind of music seriously and bringing it into the current century.

This is the second album from Black Bonzo and the sound has taken a step in a slightly more modern direction from the first album, wich was more "pure 70's" to the sound, bringing your thoughts back to bands like Uriah Heep and Purple.

Opening track is called Thorns Upon a Crown, wich is a good tune for a starter... It starts of with a cool keyboard intro and soon developes into a catchy tune with a high pitch chorus.

After the first track, setting the standard high, we are introduced to one of the albums top tracks. Giant Games is both catchy and mellow, inspired by the sounds of Van Der Graaf Generator and Gentle Giant, with a touch of the fab four as well.

Yesterdays Friends is a beautiful piece with mellow and nostalgic lyrics. The melody is drifting between mellow and more up-beat, keeping a good contrast troughout the whole song.

The album continues with The Well, wich is the first track of this album where I lose some attention. What saves this tune is the excellent guitar work, wich is superiour!

We now move on to the so called intermission, Revelation Song, a short pseudo Jethro Tull wich is driven by (yeah, you guessed it) flute. This is a track that, in my opinion, never should have left the mixing studio. But this is no reason to turn the CD off or stop reading this review, 'cause after this short break we are introduced to one of the top-3 tracks of the album.

Ageless Door was the first Black Bonzo song I heard, and is still one of my favourites! After a random intro, we are given one of the most tasty Hammond riffs in modern prog music! The melody is excellent and the drums give you the chills and make you wanna jump up and down your couch (or whereever you spend time listening to CD's) to the ride work at the end of the song.

The bombastic Iscariot is taking the sound a step further with the stunning guitar work and folk inspired melody. Again, one of the albums top-3's.

The album is closed with the title track, Sound of the Apocalypse... There is only one word to describe it: Epic! At the end of this tune, you just want to listen to the album again from top.

Even though there are a couple of question marks during half time, this album deserves a lot of credit. A fair rating would be something like 4.3 stars, so I give it a 4.