A SEAMAN'S JOURNEY

This is a good and very promising album whose strengths and weaknesses lay together in the high "variability" of the sounds and moods. Similarily to other one-man projects like the British "Purple", the very good musicianship on all the instruments used leads to an alternance of different genres inside the same track which can make it hard to follow for the listener.

There are passages from classical guitar to metal and back, good keyboard parts, excellent drumming which is often the weakest skill in one-man projects, even when programmed like here, and this time it's not. Those passages are jointed by transitions which are good enough, but sometimes appear forced or disconnected, but I have to say that, taken alone, all the small pieces which make up a track are very good in their respective genres. The Spanish metalist Daniel Bautista is a good point of reference.

It also appears to be a sort of concept album, which may appear in contradiction with what I have written until now:how can a concept sound "disconnected"? Well, first of all it's not that disconnected, then we have to consider that the Mary Celeste and the Leviathan are two concepts different enough.

As it happens with other instrumental albums, listening with an eye to the track title improves the experience, so one can imagine something dramatic happening to a ship in the Sargass Sea by the metal part suddenly replacing the acoustic melodic quietness which preceedes it.

I'm rating this album with three stars only but it deserves something more, especially for the high musical skill of Andreas Mades, but it's a very promising album and I'm almost sure that the next effort will easily deserve at least a fourth star.