DIAGONAL

Maybe I should have stayed away from this album in the end. I mean eclectic prog and progrules is not a succesful combination. Well, there is some eclectic prog I can appreciate and in fact Diagonal comes pretty close after all but still this is far away from my preferred styles of prog.

Where the references are concerned I totally agree with progaeopteryx and several other reviewers when they mention Deep Purple (in their 60's era), King Crimson and Pink Floyd (also early days). And yes, even a hint of Camel's debut is detecable indeed. Mellotron all over the place and variation is another feature of this debut by Diagonal.

But what I find somewhat disturbing is where neoprogbands and also symphonic progbands are often bashed because of their retrograde and their being derivative suddenly Diagonal is praised for the exact same thing. Ok, maybe the whole thing is done in a fresh and quite original way but it's still sheer retro what I'm hearing and it's also pretty derivative. So I will have to distract points for this fact if we are to be consistent. And in the end this album isn't really my cup of tea anyway. Let's say 2,5 stars subjectively and at least 3,5 objectively result in a downright 3 stars as far as I'm concerned. Great album but not for me.