UNDERCOVER

This is a prog cover album released by Musea Records - with four bonus tracks by Resistor, Costa & Mariotti, Roz Vitalis and Contrarian. A bit peculiar solution, why not the same idea for the whole album? On the other hand it's nice to hear four bands new to me. The cover band consists of Marco Bernard (bass), Steve Unruh (vocals, guitars, flute, violin) and Kimmo Pörsti (drums, percussion). The list of guest musicians is long. The music covered is by the prog greats such as GENESIS, YES, ELP, PINK FLOYD, MARILLION and FLOWER KINGS, and the performances are excellent, if not too close to the originals.

It starts beautifully with a 2-minute piano solo (David Myers) from the theme of 'The Lamia' which directly follows it. Wonderful, melancholic choice from the classic Genesis! Steve Unruh proves to be a very flexible singer who captures the spirit of each band he covers. 'Starship Trooper' is sung by Jon Davison who sounds a lot like Jon Anderson. Then comes a fusion- like instrumental 'World Of Adventures' from FK's debut album. Faultless! 'Assassing' is IMHO a bit bad choice from Marillion though it's performed with energy. 'Jerusalem' follows closely the overblown grandiosity of ELP.

'Dogs' is a highlight, and I give extra points for editing it anew: the latter half of the PF original gives way to a new instrumental section and it works really well. (Oh Yes, also 'Starship Trooper' differs slightly from the original in the end, which saves it from being a carbon copy.) Fine instrumental long track 'The Promise' is the only new composition - by a Finn (saxophonist Risto Salmi if I remember correctly. Sorry if I don't.)

A brief introductory text accompanies each cover track, and the thick leaflet features other memorabilia too. The lay-out is pretty good-looking. As a cover album this is very good (hmm, maybe the choices are too oriented to the best known prog bands; some more stylistic variety would have been nice!). 3½ stars. Most of the music on this CD is easily worth four stars but this cover album is not really that necessary product.