AT-KING

"At-King" is the debut full-length studio album by Swiss progressive rock act Deyss. The album was originally a self-released affair (vinyl only) released in 1985, but the Musea Records label opted to released the album in the CD format in 1990. Deyss formed sometime in the late 70s and played the club market in the French speaking part of Switzerland, but it took quite a few years before they were able to record the material for "At-King", and obviously, since they had to release the album themselves, they weren´t able to find a label to release the album.

Stylistically this is neo-progressive rock in the vein of Marillion (just take a look at the artwork and it´ll already give you a clue), late 70s Genesis, IQ, and Pendragon. There´s no doubt that Deyss can play their instruments but guest vocalist Patrick Fragnere has a thin and pretty unremarkable voice and singing style, which don´t do anything positive for the music. He is not a horrible singer, but he doesn´t add anything to the music. The material is decent but not particularly memorable.

The sound production is honestly pretty awful. Trebly, thin sounding and featuring drums which either sound like they were produced by a drum machine or are played on an electric drumkit. On the positive side I´d mention the epic 80s keyboards/synths, which lay down the right melancholic atmosphere, and the expressive melancholic guitar leads. So there are some things worth listening to here. Overall it´s not a particularly great neo-progressove rock release and a 2 star (40%) rating isn´t all wrong.