FROM THE NEW WORLD

Pell Mell´s second CD. It took me quite some time to write down what feelings this work bring to me. On one side the band did fix some vocal problems that plagued some of their debut´s excellent release. Ok, some hysterical vocals are present here and there, but they are few and when they do appear they are well palced and work within the song´s structures, believe it or not. On the other hand, their instrumental parts are not as good as on their first LP.

Most songs start off ok, with some great symphonic sounds, but most of the time they end up kind of losing direction and wasting time with long pointless solos. The arrangements seemed to be rushed and ragged, lacking a coherent whole. Nothing a good outside producer could not fix, by the way. And that´s their problem: someone should have told them to edit some of the instrumental parts and put on a more tight band playing. Besides, they attemped to adapt some classical music to the rock format instead of creating their own tunes. While this is interesting, it was nothing really groundbreaking as ELP (a very strong influence here) was doing it before and other rock bands were following this path (like Trace). And not all experiments are successful (I don´t think their version of Toccata is really convincing. Sky´s latter arrangement is much better).

it is only a pity that this album suffered from those problems, since it is obvious that the band members were consumated musicians. When they do gell, they really shine. So I guess From The New World was a disappointement after their electrifying start.

Not bad at all, but not really very good either. 2,5 stars.