WEAK WAVING

This is very interesting!! A neo prog band from italy? I haven´t seen many of them around (I guess this is the first). And following the footsteps of Fish-era Marillion. Weak Waving was their debut CD in 1990 (a time when Marillion itself was turning into a alternative/pop group). I must say I did not like this band initially. The first song I heard from them was March Of The Gods, which is simply a poor, carbon copy, of Marillion´s anthem Market Square Heroes. However, when I heard the rest of the tunes, I was quite impressed by their songwriting.

Unfortunatly this and other very good facts about this band (like the excellent musicanship and the tasteful arrangements) are marred by the very bad production and the wrong choice of who to sing their stuff. Fabrizio Goria is not one the worst singers in the world, but clearly he is no match for the band´s skillful playing and his heavy, thick accent is beyond the bearable. If they were to have english lyrics the guy should at least learn a little english and the right pronunciation of the words. I keep wondering if things would be much better if they tried to sing in their native language. I don´t know if italian works in Neo prog style, but certainly it could not be worse. Bands like Arrakeen proved that at least french worked very well for this kind of music.

The instrumental parts are great, with some brilliant guitar parts, as expected. The bass player is also excellent. A pity that the poor recording put the vocals too loud and the instruments a little off balance. However, the band and the songs are so powerful that they do shine even with those bugging problems. The Coming has a terrific acoustic guitar solo and the second half of the CD shows how good they actually are. The use of some subtle extra instruments like soprano sax, flute and even a gregorian choir enhances their brilliant perfomances. Highlights are two long ones, the Coming and Carnac and the short and fast Big Rush.

In the end I found this CD to be very pleasant and promising, even if they are plagued with the aforementioned problems. I´m looking forward to hear their next releases. They surely could go very far. If you are a fan of neo prog in general - and of early Marillion in particular - you should check this out.

Rating: for the great songs, 4 stars. For the production and singing, 2 stars. Then I guess a 3 star overall rating is fair enough.