RESILIENCE

Karma Depth worked five years on Resilience and I think you can hear that. The tracks are very well crafted and the arrangements are pretty detailed. This is excellent progressive rock which includes some powerful elements from metal. You'll notice the metal influences when focussing on the guitar riffs and the rhythm section which sounds very tight. It is clear the guitar parts take the leading role on "Resilience" . I have the feeling all of the tracks are based on the guitar parts. Keyboards are weaving an atmospheric web on the background and come to the front for some moog solo's, gentle piano parts or climaxes. For a prog band the singer has a powerful voice. Just to give you a clue what he's sounding like : Denis Deyoung meets Michael Sadler. You won't spot any sun queens or prophets in the lyrics, the words aren't really poetic but the idea's are straight from the heart and interesting enough to hold your attention. The instrumental parts are definitely in the majority anyway.

Quite surprising "Ask yourself "starts in a jazzy mood which returns every now and then during the course of the track. As an introduction to the musical style this track makes it clear emotion is the driving force for the music but nevertheless there's just as many changes in moods an rhythms like in all of the tracks. "Hope" is the strange one on Resilience. A short song, a kind of ballad, based on a beautiful piano line. Even though the guitars are hardly present, the guitar solo's are breathtaking and makes you aware the guitar playing throughout the album is brilliant. The rest of the tracks all are epics. "The price" is one of the highlights of this album. This track has an excellent development from start to finish. The chorus is absolutely stunning even if it's a bit reminiscent to Transatlantic. Once you've heard it, you'll never forget it. "The ring" tells the story of the life of a clown, a theme that's often used in this kind of music. Again, the keyboards are responsible for the atmospheric sound and there's some interesting staccato keyboard sounds somewhat referring to Saga if it wasn't for the piano. "See how I glow" is full of stunning melodies in vocals and guitar lines. Again, a strong chorus and a very nice interlude with dark sounding keyboards. At this point Petralia has a heartbreaking solo spot where it seems you're listening to a record from a guitar hero like Joe Satriani or Yngwie Malmsteen but his playing fits in the whole of the track perfectly. Sometimes he's producing fireworks, sometimes the guitar playing is simply gentle ; virtuous in any case. All the musicians seem very skilled in neither what part of the album but the instrumental sections are even more exciting on the large epic "Heal" which is divided in 7 parts. Undeniable the best prog stuff I have heard in years, 22 minutes seem to flow like you're listening to a pop song of 3 minutes. Great interplay between organ and guitar and an excellent balance between technical perfectionism and emotion. Also there's a great diversity in styles, some DT, some funk, jazz, even Rush comes to mind at one point. "Nirweiba" is a lovely acoustic track including some harp and closes this album in style.

For a debut album this is pretty ambitious. Resilience contains 78 minutes of new material without any flaws. A highly enjoyable prog album for those who want to spend some time for letting it grow on them. It's technical nature makes it hard to listen from start to finish ; it's better listen in parts otherwise this could be too much of something good. If this is just their first effort, expectations are high for the next couple of albums. Fans of DT should definitely check this band out, they'll surely be delighted as KD tend to go further where DT stopped after the release of "Images and words" most notably in melody, complexity and structure of the tracks but don't expect KD to be as heavy as DT cause they're not, this really is prog. Therefore it wouldn't be fair to call this a DT clone, it's amazing how the band succeeds in creating an own sound on a debut album. recommended !

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