Castle Mountain Moon is a German neo prog rock duo consisting of Robert Kohler (keyboards) and Dirk Krause (vocals, guitar, and bass guitar) and Six Tales Of Perception, featuring seven tracks, is their debut album. Perception, an instrumental with a keyboard intro, opens this album and it is a dark track, which is followed by Blue Sky Machine, which kicks off with an Acapella passage, followed by the “Bel canto” singing of Krause and some nice, melodic, and catchy guitar and keyboard solos indeed. Elephant is a truly diverse track with “obvious” musical influences from Emerson, Lake & Palmer and vocally I hear influences from Billy Joel and John Wetton. Fly definitely has clear AOR and classic rock features, think of bands like the Electric Light Orchestra and again ELP. To The Moon is my favourite track featuring a couple of nice guitar solos, while Who is a run of the mill acoustic, rather dull track which I will skip in the future if I am going to listen to CMM's debut album. Finally, Suddenly, is a tedious, too long ballad with cello playing and a monumental end. Six Tales Of Perception is a rather mixed concept album with neo prog rock music that does not really shake the world for me...but thats only my humble opinion. Others might find it rather interesting if you are into dark neo progressive rock concept albums. Therefore, listen for yourself first! *** Martien Koolen (edited by Dave Smith) Where to buy? |
