FINGERPRINT

For the second Egoband effort the leading duo of Alessandro Accordino and Alfonso Capasso recruited guitarist Simone Coloretti and drummer Andrea Brogi in the place of Massimo Fava and Fabio Cioni respectively.In the meantime the band had signed a new contract with Mellow Records and the recordings of ''Fingerprint'' took place just 20 km far from their hometown, at MIDI Studios in Pisa, between April and May of 1993.

While the band showed no signs of changing any direction, musically speaking, there was a bit of downfall in the inspiration level.The compositions remain well-crafted, well-executed and balanced between mellow and richer parts, always maintaining this evident MARILLION vibe and delivering flashy keyboard parts, guitar solos and strong lyrical explosions with Accordino still sounding a lot like FISH.Even the atmosphere remains a bit dark and haunting, following MARILLION and ASGARD's traces.However this time the tracks are not particularly memorable.The constant presence of vocal parts, the mainly downtempo tracks and the lack of some true inspiration are propably the reasons for this fact.And while in ''Trip in the Light of the World'' some great moments would help the listener overcome the strong MARILLION influence, this time the sound is close to a mediocre copy than to a band just using MARILLION's sound to guide their music.These guys though never forgot to be great performers and some moments in the album are still interesting, offered by the ability of Egoband to create some good atmospheric passages.

Not the best Egoband release by any means.Safe, secure and unsurprising MARILLION-esque Neo Prog, having a tendency to create something great but never reaching it, headed almost exclusively to dedicated followers of the style and to the few out there not bothered by listening to mediocre copy-bands...2.5 stars.