VOICES BEYOND MY CURTAIN

I listened to this peculiar album number of times now but I have a hard time figuring it out. And that's pretty unusual for neo prog, certainly in my case. Main reason for my being bewildered is the combination of great compositions/pretty complex neo prog on one hand and unevenness in the execution on the other hand. And then I especially mean the extremely strange female vocals I can't get hold of.

When I first heard Laura Basla sing I didn't even know for sure we were dealing with female vocals to begin with. Her voice is both dark and quite low, on the other hand it's too high pitched for an average male voice as well so all in all it's somewhere in between. So much where the vocals are concerned. How about the compositions ? First of all, these are complex most certainly for neo standards but even for prog in general this is really hard stuff to chew on. But if you give the songs some time to grow on you, you will be rewarded in the end.

The instrumental execution is very good as well so after these many listenings the positive elements have beaten the doubts due to some strange initial impressions. The recent average of 3,47 is a very fair one and I would have loved to give this 3,5 if possible but I will have to choose sadly enough. And then my personal taste and love for the album is just not adequate enough for the 4 stars so will have to give 3, with some pain in the heart that is ...