L'ARAIGNÉE-MAL

Opening as it does with the dark and foreboding Le Photographe Exorciste, dominated by spooky Mellotron and bass, you'd be forgiven for thinking that L'Araignee-Mal ("The Evil Spider") would be an intriguingly original horror-prog album. Sadly, the dark tone is not sustained over the course of the entire album (though some dark Crimsonish guitar sections do creep in here and there), with the titular sidelong epic sounding rather anonymous and pedestrian to my ears - ticking all the symphonic prog boxes without doing anything particularly novel with the format. A competent and well-performed but not spectacular album from this French band - probably the best one I've heard from them so far, though there's really not much to choose between them.