CHAINS

Ricocher is one of the unfairly unknown neo prog bands from Holland. With two albums in their pockets they gone unnoticed in their 15 years career. The second album issued in 2004 is aswell their swansong, named Chains. Well . I like what I've heared here, melodic compositions, neo prog with some symphonic touches here and there, not bad at all. Very good are the keyboards here, very mature sound and very crafted album overall, even is nothing really groundbreaking or inovative, but is very well performed and composed, at least to my ears. Similar with another dutch neo prog band named Splinter or with Galleon. I like the transitions between more edgy moments to those more melodic and smooth, aswell the album has 7 pieces but are divided in smaller ones. A perfect example of how great and yet unnoticed this band is is the opening tyrack Virtula images, splited in 3 parts, very good are the instrumental passagages, good guitar sound and a good voice over, I'm not botherd at all about Erwin Boerenkamps tone, fits perfectly in this kind of music. Another highlit is the last tune Braking the chains, a very worthy neo prog pice that shows that Ricocher had plenty of talent but somehow they gone almost unnoticed in this field. So, in the end I like it, 4 stars easy, maybe is not among the top albums in this field but definetly worth a better view for sure. And as a final though as far as I know they disbanded a couple of years after the Chain release, so another band that for some reasons never made it in prog field, really is a shame because most of the time, but not always, the better bands are gone unnoticed and those mediocre remains to hurt our brains.