SIGNS OF CHANGE

I heard this band made a prog debut album in the late 70´s before they decided to become a new wave outfit and release an infamous version of Falco´s hit Der Komissar in the 80´s. Well, fortunalty, I never heard this or any other of their pop records. But recently I had the opportunily of finding their first CD and I was quite surprised with their sound: Signs Of Chance is a keyboard driven record that has some nice moments. However, the timing for this kind of music was all wrong. And the stuff here was not good enough to make them be notice for anyone but their local fans.

Not that it was bad, no. In fact I liked their Hammond organ sound and they did have the knack to write a few nice hooks. But the problem is that the songs are no more than ok, Andy Piercy voice´s is ok and the playing is ok. In all, nothing that really stands out except maybe the fact that they wrote christian lyrics (something unusual in prog circles at the time). And it´s ok with that too, since they were not really preachy. All the tracks are more or less on the same level, except for the instrumental jigs, with its folksy theme, totally out of place here. The CD has a overall good production.

In the end I found this record to be more of a curio than anything else. Even for the time, they were far behind the best prog groups of the day. However, the band showed some promise that unfortunatly were not fulfilled. Signs of Change is definitly for fans and collectors.