MOTH VELLUM

MOTH VELLUM formed in LA back in 2007 with like-minded musicians wanting to play that old school 70's music but without it having the modern trends going on at the time. This is their sole release from 2007, at least the first version of this album in the form of files was released then with a physical release happening in 2008. For me this is like a Symphonic/Crossover mashup with YES and GENESIS coming to mind at times but for my tastes just too sugary with those high pitched vocals and synth driven sound.

About 58 minutes of music over 6 tracks and they were a four piece with Johannes Luley on guitar and I have one of his solo albums plus he formed the band PERFECT BEINGS after this band split. The drummer who also sings would form a band called MANCUNIAN CANDIDATE who are on this site under Crossover.

A fairly highly rated album around the internet, people seem to love that melodic synth/vocal sound but I can only take this in bits if you know what I mean, kind of how I feel about MAGIC PIE and the like, or Neo, Crossover and many YES inspired bands in general. Exceptions abound of course and I can appreciate the talent on display here I just couldn't imagine actually wanting to play this ever again, so just not my thing which people need to keep in mind here. An example of what I mean is "Whalehead" that second track where the vocals just make me want to cringe and that YES and GENSIS sound is the most obvious.

So not into the synths throughout this record except for the spacey ones on "Walk It Off". Mostly they swirl endlessly and where's the guitar? A back seat for sure, not close to driving the music that's for sure. The one song I'd recommend to at least checkout is the longest piece called "Salvo" at 13 1/2 minutes. It just works better and more consistently in my opinion. They reveal their chops here including the drum intro and guitar later on. Less sugary too I suppose.

A 3 star record in my world but keep in mind a lot of music fans love this one, so consider my words with a grain of salt or two.