HEARTQUAKE / REDUX

Italy's first neo-prog band, LEVIATHAN, formed all the way back in 1985 in Rome and released its debut album HEARTQUAKE in 1988 alongside classic neo-prog bands like Marillion, Pendragon, IQ, Pallas and Twelfth Night and then released a couple more albums in the 90s but after the band's third album "Volume" in 1998 just disappeared from the scene and hasn't been heard from since. It's been 26 years since the band's last album and at long last in 2024 the band has come out of hiding and delivers a new release in 2024.

HEARTQUAKE / REDUX isn't exactly a new album but rather a reinterpreted re-recording of the debut HEARTQUAKE that first appeared 34 years ago. Obviously many changes have occurred in that time. For starters the only members to have spanned all four decades are vocalist Alex Brunori and percussionist Andrea Monetta with Andrea Amici (keyboards) joining LEVIATHAN in on the 1990 second release "Bee Yourself" and bassist Andrea Castelli and guitarist Fabio Serra only joining in for this newly recorded version of the debut.

The album features all the same tracks as the debut with the exception that the seventh track "There's Only Watershade" is missing as well as not including the bonus track "In the Dream of Up We Quake!" which appeared on the 1994 CD from Musea. This newer rendition clocks in at 41 minutes and features a completely different album cover. While it may seem strange that a band waits so long to release another album and then it happens to be a remake of its debut, apparently this is only a teaser for the new album "Testudo" that will show the band adapting to the brave new world of neo-prog in the 2020s.


As far as this HEARTQUAKE / REDUX album goes, it's pretty much a faithful restoration of the original without really bringing it up to date musically but rather focuses on all the production tricks that a modern sheen mixing job can bring to the table. Still sounding very much like that dated neo-prog style from the 80s, LEVIATHAN basically is letting the prog world know that it's still alive and well with every intent to continue but honestly after listening to this one after the original debut first, i can't say there are a lot of improvements here other than the obvious production. Personally i would've expected some stylistic shifts to update it into the new millennium but apparently the band found it fit to simply keep it as authentically retro as possible.

It's a decent representation of 80s neo-prog with that Marillion inspired bass groove and of course the Steve Hackett guitar sweeps along with the usual saturation of symphonic keyboard attacks. The musicians are all competent but honestly this remake doesn't really take things as far as i'd hoped considering the band's debut was a fairly average sounding release for 1988 long after the bigwigs of neo-prog had gotten underway. Once again the band sounds totally British without any clues of its Italian heritage. This is one of those albums i really don't get what all the fuss is about. It's pleasant. It gets the job done but doesn't beg a return visit like pretty much every modern album from Arena, IQ, Pendragon or Galahad. A good album but not really much more than that. A decent comeback but some brand new fresh material would have been more interesting.