THE DEVOURING

Djam Karet has been around since the late 80's, conceived in a period of psychedelic rock rebirth that also spawned better-known bands such as Porcupine Tree and Ozric Tentacles. Fans of the instrumental side of Porcupine Tree's 90s albums should definitely check this band out, and so should Tentacles heads that want something less bouncy for a change. However, contrary to most opinions I wouldn't recommend the "Devouring".

The album is one of the longest and most varied in DK's career and it gives an ample demonstration of what this band is all about, and that's mixing King Crimson guitar parts with a Floydian spaceyness, lots of jamming, ambient experimentations. My disagreement with this albums comes from the band's attempt to focus on composition rather then freely flowing improvisations. It all starts very well with "Night of the Mexican Goat Sucker" and "Forbidden by Rule", also ambient pieces such as "Myth of a White Jesus" are up to their usual standard. However, it generally sounds as if the band wanted to do an instrumental symphonic prog album, which is IMO not their strength. It results in rather fluffy and cheesy material such as "Lost but not Forgotten", "The River of No Return", "Room 40" and "Old Soldier's Disease". Also the use of cliché bee-buzzing prog synths is very prominent on this material. Not a good thing.

I can imagine this album could be a good introduction to Djam Karet for symphonic prog oriented listeners. After all it's very diverse, light-hearted, well-played and dynamic. But I simply don't like it much, actually it's the only Djam Karet album I'm not much enthused about. I would rather recommend "Burning The Hard City", "Suspension & Displacement", "NDA" or "Heavy Soul Sessions". 5/10