Bjørn Riis
A Storm is Coming

A storm is coming in form of the fourth album by Airbag co-founder, songwriter and lead guitarist Bjørn Riis. It is a storm with a pretty lame cover and it starts with falling rain and then ends with an epilogue. The best alum by Riis so far and it has six epic songs, if we are to believe the press material, six songs is the verifiable theme, the rest is subjective – and I think the press material is slightly dishonest.

Art rock, prog rock and atmospheric pop in combination – that too according to the press material. I am not sure about that one either; progressive rock of the atmospheric kind feels like a good description. Kind of stereotypical progressive rock, not really progressive in creative terms and the album lacks sense of dynamics, it feels static. And it feels like a long album, 51 minutes usually isn’t too long in the progressive genre but the tracks are long and quite uneventful and that makes the album seem long.

One of the perks of writing reviews is that it can help you with insomnia, something I have problems with – I can use this one to complement the pills, at least for a while. None of the six “epic” tracks grabs my attention and the album mostly passes by somewhere in the outside reaches of my consciousness and when it end it has passed by without me really noticing what I have heard. Riis makes a good production but fails to make a convincing album.

Not a very storming album, it doesn’t stand out and it doesn’t make me want to listen. I find myself unexcited by what I am hearing, but perhaps you might find it appealing if you are a fan of the progressive stuff but as it doesn’t really stand out it is far from a certainty. There are wiser choices released in this genre recently and I recommend that you look at them rather than this one, I am not claiming that this is a bad album but it is a bit tired and a bit boring so it isn’t great. The wise choice would be to look elsewhere for your progressive pleasures.

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