SOMATERIA SPECTABILIS

A very fine slice of '70 inspired symphonic prog delivered by dutch band named King Eider. With only one album released in 2005 named Somateria spectabilis issued at Musea records. The title track is the latin terminology of a duck from arctic sea, sounds pretty intrsting so far. The band is formed by two musicins from the band Nice Beaver - Derk-Evert Waalkens and Hans Gerritse helped by Dik Pomp and Rinie Huigen from another known band from prog circles Cliffhanger the later one being member for some time in neo prog band Knight Area. A fairly decent album with nice instrumental sections spacially in instrumental pieces Somateria Spectabilis a very good symphonic tune clocking around 11 min, really good passages. Another worthy one is King of ducks with this time good vocal parts, remind me a lot of Camel meet Genesis golden era. Very good are the guitar lines specially on In detain another long track around 10 and a half minutes that show that this band is know what is doing even has plenty of influences in thir mix. Somehow an unknown band with potential but far from being really groundbreaking in their field. To me thay sounds very much alike with american symphonic prog act Legacy aswell releasing one album in 2000 named Where we go. 3 stars for this quite unnoticed yet pleasent album.