Myon
Vitalworks

Finnish band Myon are back with a new album, for the first time since 2007. Not the most diligent of album makers, this is only their fifth album in a career that spans near two decades, their first album was released back in 1998. Vitalworks is the name of the album that marks a quintet of album for the quintet of musicians; it has a pretty cool cover artwork and is loaded with songs. There are fourteen songs on this new album, and like the previous album that was critically acclaimed it is mixed and mastered by the band’s keyboardist.

Melodic rock/hardrock, with a few progressive touches. Relatively modern and imaginative, I think that by implementing a few unexpected things, like a bit of tango in the first track that also has a Spanish chorus, they spice things up and make an album that as a whole is quite standard feel rather fresh. The keyboards are a strong presence on this album; the vocals are okay but nothing that special and the same goes for the sound. So a decently produced album with 14 tracks that is relatively well varied between them but the playing time feels a bit long so maybe they should have scaled it down a bit, maybe 14 should have been ten. Solid effort though and fans of the genre would probably find it agreeable, and I can add that it sounds a fair bit Finnish.

Solid album, quite good actually but I cannot help feeling a bit overcharged. The album just keeps going and going and in the end I feel like it is a bit of a waste continuing to listen – not that the end is bad but there are at least four tracks too many. I think this band, and many with them, needs to learn quality over quantity as there is always better to make fewer songs of higher quality than many songs of a quality near that higher quality. And we all know that humans have a limited attention span, meaning that albums that are too long stops being interesting and your attention starts drifting elsewhere which is what happens when you listen to this album. I think ten tracks and around 40 minutes is a good target for an upper limit of songs and playing time, that is what has proven to work in most cases. I think that the case for this is also way too strong to just dismiss, it is very difficult to make music that is so good that it keeps a listener interested for over fifty minute let alone an hour. Then again, who am I to argue writing on average 500 words in a review?

Well, it starts with a surprise a bit of a tango on a song you want to play over again, Otra Vez is the name of this song. The chorus in Spanish and the different rhythms it offers makes it a very strong song, the best on the album. I also like How Does it End which is another fine song, good chorus there just like in the previously mentioned track. All the songs are quite good but as I have been nagging about all the time, they should have lost about four of them in order to make this album more dynamic which also would have made it seem a lot better than it appears today. When you come from waiting for an album to end it is much more difficult to be positive about it than when you feel like you didn’t get quite enough because then you want to hear more not less.

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