It took Chris Postel (former RPWL bass player) of Parzivals Eye six years to finally follow up his debut album. Was it actually worth the wait? Maybe not, as Parzivals Eye Fragments (2009, see review) was definitely much better than his new album. Defragments is too smooth, too poppy and not daring and experimental enough. Furthermore the album contains two covers and as a frequent reader of this medium you should know by now that I HATE covers. Postel chose Two Of Us (originally by Supertramp) and Long Distance (originally by Yes of course) as cover songs and especially the latter is a horrible version with vocals from Christina Booth (Magenta). Luckily there are also a couple of songs I really enjoy such as Reach The Sky, Out On The Street and Journeys. Reach The Sky is an epic track (12:13) and really has RPWL musical trademarks; furthermore this song contains two beautiful, melodic guitar solos. Out On The Streets again features a marvellous breath-taking guitar solo and Journeys is a good mid-tempo prog rock track. The vocals of Postel are actually quite all right, but I really have to criticize his pronunciation, just listen to the chorus of Walls In My Mind and you hear Walls mispronounced as Wolls ..... I also have to mention the lack of originality of Defragments as the album is really too safe; Postel takes no musical risks at all. The entire album is maybe too sweet and too predictable, although I have heard worse albums of course ... Hiding Out is the last track of the album and this one clocks sixteen minutes according to your CD players, however the song only lasts eight minutes, the rest of the song (eight minutes) is complete silence! This really annoys me and it is no good way to end an album. I really think that Parzivals Eye can do much better than this, so I am looking forward to the new album already. Hopefully that will not be in 2021! *** Martien Koolen (edited by Astrid de Ronde) Where to buy? |
