Customer Reviews

Diagonal

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

How refreshing, In an age of media championed mediocrity we find a bunch of young guys banded together not afraid to pursue a fresh take on a tangent within that most hated of all genres.... "PROG"... gasp oh, shock, horror, there,I've said it..... with lashings of mellotron, sax, bass ,drums, guitar, analog dreams and musical exploration......
What we have here is a fresh take embodying the vibe of late 60's early 70's UK proto-prog and jazz prog from this era.... bands like Nucleus,Van Der Graff Generator,Khan,Gracious,Caravan,Colosseum,Fuschia,Arc, all come to mind.... plus a whole host of others from Germany and Italy too if you do your research and not believe those in the media that would have you think this period produced nothing more than self indulgent hippy ramblings best forgotten.....
I do find the music on this CD a little tentative in places to take that one step further into full freak out mode, and personaly I would have liked a little more horns to adorn more segments and not lapse into the slightly metaloid riffing that does occur.... But hey, what a great debut.
If anyone in the band reads this review, if I were you guys, let the keys and horns lead more. What made many of these earlier proto-proggers the gems they were/are was the dominant role these musicians had in the bands. Gutiar was a secondary sound. That's not to say the Diagonal's guitar sound is generic of todays sounds, on the contrary... it is most fitting to the overall organic sound these guys create and in my opinion only lapses a few times.... Also, continue to explore the sounds you want to create wherever it leads and do not be afarid to go back to the future. Listen hard to the LPs of the old fossils whose time will never come in this disgraceful mediocre, punked plume of image driven eggs we have today... Please just don't give up.....!!

It's really nice to know there's a band like Diagonal who, I am certain, is getting mighty tired of all the Marillion, Spock's Beard, and Dream Theatre clones that's been clogging up the prog scene in the last 15 or so years. So they harken back to the glory days of the late '60s and early '70s with this self-entitled 2008 release! Not only that, but they completely avoid digital gear, so everything you here is 100% authentic, including the Mellotron! Plus the album was recorded at Toe Rag Studios in London where only vintage gear is allowed. So that's a big relief that when you hear a Mellotron here, it's Andy Thompson's Mellotron (Andy Thompson runs the Planet Mellotron website and was a member of Litmus for a while) and not an M-Tron.

This seven piece band from Brighton can be quite heavy at times, with psychedelic overtones. That opening cut, "Semi Permeable Men Brain" is a prime example what I'm talking about. Lots of great guitar work, great jamming and use of wind instruments, plus the Mellotron and late '60s psychedelic overtones. It'll get you thinking these are one of those unearthed albums from the '70s, when in fact it was recorded in 2008 by a bunch of guys in their mid 20s who weren't even alive during prog's glory days (these guys are even a bit younger than Britney Spears). "Child of the Thunder Cloud" starts off rather mellow, with Moody Blues-like vocal harmonies, and I love how this song builds into a rocking climax. "Deathwatch" is a more mellow piece overall, having a Canterbury feel, while "Cannon Misfire" is an instrumental piece showing lots of repetitive, but effective riffing. "Pact" is the lengthiest piece on the album. There's an ambient passage that gets me thinking of Vangelis, or perhaps Eno. I noticed that none of the music is a direct ripoff of any band in particular. The vocals can stand some improving. But I still give it a five star rating because the music itself just simply blew me away. For those wanting new prog played the way it used to, I can highly recommend this album!

These guys sure are ORIGINAL. When every new prog-band these days goes "yeah, let's rip off Peter Gabriel's singing", well, strangely enough, these guys seem to be ripping off The Moody Blues' singing! Who'd have thought we see the day that ripping someone off could somehow translate into originality?

Of-course, these guys can't sing like Justin Hayward at all; they mumble or rush the vocals. They are imitating his voice but completely lack his talent and phrasing.

So you can strike the vocals off, but anyway, you can do that with just about any second-rate prog band.
The instrumental sections are rather good, very enjoyable. And, yeah, the sound does kind of drip with the exciting simplicity and rawness of an album circa 1970.

It starts off with "Semi-Permeable Men-brain", a song which has more inspiration in the title probably. The next two songs gather some pace and then there's the pungent instrumental "Canon Misfires" - this one's a beauty. The bassline is spine-chilling eerie and yet gorgeous to anyone with an appreciation of experimental music. Mark that one down in your books, boys, as one to be sought out. Get it anyway you can.

The album ends with, predictably, a 'big epic' finale. Quite a good song, but that mellotron interlude ain't no 'Total Mass Retain'.

So there you have it, worth hunting down for the final two tracks and good instrumental work all round; 4 or 5 out of ten!