Lunocode
Celestial Harmonies

Italian band Lunocode showed a lot of potential but not much real quality with their debut EP that was released last year, now they are releasing their debut album and maybe they have addressed the small issues I had with the debut. The cover art is in the same style but has evolved into a more skyward or celestial viewpoint, it looks a bit more positive as well. The talk is that the album is more progressive than the debut which I described as not really progressive at all in my review of that EP, according to the mastering guy known for association with King Crimson the band sounds like Lunocode and nothing else. That statement is stating the obvious as they are Lunocode, shouldn’t they sound like Lunocode? But what I think was meant is that they have their own sound and not running around copying what others do, which is a valid point in music today. But what about this debut album then? is it as good as we are being led to believe?

Well musically it is not overly different from the debut EP, the sound is a little more progressive so the label progressive rock is a decently fitting one even though we might say melodic metal or rock as well, with progressive elements added. As before they are female fronted which is always a plus in my book, some male vocals and spoken word parts are also present on the album so it isn’t only the woman singing. The sound is comprised in fewer layers than most progressive music making the sound a bit lighter, scaled down and not as massive as is popular in music today. The album does not really have a long list of songs either, it stops at five and with the last one being a 30 minute track you might still understand that the playing time is quite long, little over 57 minutes to be precise. I should also add that it isn’t a particularly complicated album, the melodies and structures are quite straightforward so it isn’t an album just for the progressive fans.

Comparing with the EP from last year, this album is in a whole other league. It is more mature in sound, a little scaled down but melodies and feeling is much better. The first four songs are also way better than anything on the EP, they are really good songs that captivates the mind of the listener and gives a sense of quality to them and the album. All is not good though and after having listened to this album three times already today I took to listening to the Ayreon debut album called The Final Experiment and talk about being in a different league, but to be fair I do think that the first four tracks are not far from the worst tracks on said Ayreon debut in quality and you who have not heard that album should know that it is a brilliant album with at least two of the best songs I have ever heard. The real letdown for Lunocode though (to get back on topic) is the final track, what the hell were they thinking?

It is a track and song in six parts and fair enough, this is done by many bands for instance said Ayreon, but none in songs that reach 30 minutes and I have never heard a thirty minute track that is good. If you say A Pleasant Shade of Grey I will not stand corrected as that is in Twelve tracks with no titles, then there is nothing else I can even think of besides Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence which is also in several tracks, even the over 20 minute epics we hear from time to time are usually poor. Ten to twenty minutes is okay if the music blends together smoothly and seamlessly which they don’t in The Origin of Matter and Mind. It feels like six tracks just put together in one, why is that? I just cannot see a single good reason for this, especially as there are parts that are so bad that I just want to drill a hole in my head to avoid hearing more of it, I cannot turn it off either because there are still good stuff to come in the same track. Why couldn’t it be in six tracks so I could throw two of them away and keep the rest of the album, now I will either have to throw away the entire last track and keep a four track EP that is fantastic, or use a music program to cut away the bad parts from the long track and get an album that is great.

I feel I became a bit long on the ill will towards this track but it is a letdown for the entire album, and the spoken part before the ending why did they use someone who have no idea what english really sounds like, not only does the philosophical monologue say nothing it is also poorly presented. I have never really been much for spoken word parts that are supposed to appear deep and mindful because they never appear that way and they are never good either.

But leaving the unsatisfactory ending, there are four great tracks that open this album, feeling, atmosphere and great melodies which equates to everything I want in music. When I first listened to this album and was going through the first four tracks I was really happy, thinking that they have cleaned up their act and made something great, a debut album to really take to heart and cherish. I think all four of these tracks are really good and I will keep listening to them even now that I have written this review, too bad it did not last all the way to the end, that they had to ruin everything with some ill conceived delusion of grandeur.

It ends up being a good album as the brilliance of the first four tracks and half the album is more or less negated by the poorness of the ending epic. Still, Celestial Harmonies is a great step forward and a source of great music, now for the future I hope that Lunocode realises that really long tracks and spoken word parts are as great as falling into a lake of vomit. Hats of though to some great music, Misty Visions of an Ordinary day is a real treat.