Customer Reviews

Megalazottak Es Megszomoritott

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This album is one fo their earliest album and not as rock as latter albums. Consisting only 5 tracks, with the first exceed 20 min, you will definitely feel a new atmosphere of progressive rock!

Not much guitar and keyboards were used in this album. But you can hear their extraordinaire performance in piano, drums, bass, flute, cello, violin and some synths. The music is quite dark and mellow, but very strong and depressed (brilliantly performed by cello and violin). In this part, I don't see much influence from King Crimson. At least not in their style. But they are close in making dark mood. Don't you ever search for Fripp/ Belew/ Lake/ Bruford/ Wetton style in After Crying. Perhaps Ian Mc Donald was the only KC giving influence to After Crying.

However, you can hear ELP influence hear and there. But it's not like Ars Nova (Japan) or Par Lindh Project (Sweden). After Crying has solid identity to make them differ from ELP or King Crimson.

The first track runs at 22 min and it gives you enough satisfaction to enjoy a slow, cello-piano-violin, dark song with Hungarian lyrics. Next follow two short songs that still has the same spirit. Then on track 4, the title track, you can hear their outstanding performance creating outstanding song. Faster than previous tracks, this track is among their masterpiece in this first era of After Crying (later they add more electric guitar, english lyrics and rockier).

If you're new to AC and looking for a whole album to start, this album is the right place to begin.

Based on reading the reviews at the Gibraltar Encyclopedia of Progressive Rock, I took a chance and ordered this, my first CD by After Crying. I am very glad I did!

The GEPR reviews tend to describe After Crying as similar to King Crimson circa Islands. This is superficially true in that the instrumentation is similar, and compositionally they're in the same ballpark as well, but After Crying definitely have a spirit and feel all their own. For one thing, Fripp's monster guitar sound is totally absent from After Crying's sound; I can also say they're nowhere near as arty-farty as Islands was often guilty of.

The lyrics are all in Hungarian, which is sort of a shame because I have the distinct feeling that knowing the words would greatly enhance one's enjoyment of this disc, as the previous reviewer mentioned. The singer sort of brings to mind Greg Lake's vocals during the quieter moments of King Crimson's *In the Wake of Poseidon*. There are two very long pieces (22 and 11 minutes) and three shorter pieces (all under 3-1/2 minutes). Musically, there's a big chamber music influence at work here, with mournful, minor-keyed viola/violins the most prominent instrument, often backed with atmospheric string synths. More rock-oriented is the title track (the 11-minute piece), which features drums and some great David Cross-like violin, and somewhat recalls *Sailor's Tale* from Islands for the first half, though not as frenetic. The second part of this piece is much quieter, more contemplative, and very sad-sounding. Great stuff!

Seeing this band live must be a truly massive experience. If what I've described sounds like your cup of tea, by all means get this one!

This is one of my favourit A.C. albums. The first song, Gadarai megszallott has a very touchy lyrics. I feel sorry for evreybody, who does not understand Hungarian language, as many A.C. lyrics are artistic, and touchy like an Attila Jozsef poem (who is also my favourite poet). Gadarai megszallott and Megalazottak es Megszomoritottak stir me up, while the other songs give me a calm but sad feeling. If you like Overground Music or Elso Evtized, you should try this excellent album too. Visit extra.hu/after-crying

If you know anyone who has a disdain for prog rock claiming that it is pretentious, self-indulgent and cheesy, show them this album. Megalázottak és Megszomorítottak is as prog as could be, yet it doesn't fall into any of those traps (though one could argue that's what makes it progressive in the first place). It is one of the most beautiful and surreal yet omnious progressive rock albums I've ever got my hands on and something that has to be heard to be believed.

After Crying are a band of sound texture. A wide variety of instruments are used to make the gorgeous yet foreboding atmospheres found here. The standard guitar, drums, bass and keys are accompanied by a cello, various wind instruments and some of the softest yet heartfelt vocals I've ever heard in a prog rock band. This band are all about moods. They move from passage to passage with bursts of energetic guitar work following soothing string sections. The violin work is especially good on the first track, sounding mournful yet almost timid before becoming almost painfully scratchy and intense. The short A Kis Hos is perhaps the greatest 3 minutes of the album, a sad, emotional piece with warm yet mournful strings and vocals that sound like a choir at a funeral.

If you consider yourself a fan of progressive rock music then you need this album. End of.

Well this is another masterpiece by the most creative, versatile band in Europe (Sometimes Solaris, another hungarian prog band, Isildurs Bane from Sweden, Univers Zero,Magma,Minimum Vital from France and still Art Zoyd in the less complex and difficult moments to take,can be almost aligned), able to show their skill in the quite moments and in those more aggressive and epic as well!! I would have apreciated this ability to create so many colors and great sinergies between each member and the other, also in the Emerson Lake and Palmer albums, where instead Emerson in person only could write and dominate the scenes (except for some tracks)as for the lack of a real guitarist or other real orchestral instruments like trumpets, horns and so on (I remember in this case the splendid album by the american prog band Mirthrandr, able to do this in 1974!!)- Anyway talking about After Crying I think of this album and "De profundis as well" the best along with "6", even if the latter is a bit too much heterogeneous.
Wonderful stuff!!

3 1/2


Though not the breakout I was expecting, MeM continues showcasing this unique band as one of the few independent voices of the nineties neo scene.