Almost two years ago, I saw the first live performance of
Blind Ego in The Netherlands
. The band formed by guitarist
Kalle Wallner (RPWL),
had just released their debut album
Mirror,
an album dominated by
mainstream rock with occasional links to our beloved music genre.
Numb is
Blind Ego's second release. In The Netherlands, three gigs were organized to
promote the album. After the events, it is easy to say that maybe one or two gigs
would have been enough for a rather unknown act. In presale, only a couple of tickets
were sold a week before Blind Ego would perform at the warm and comfortable
concert hall in Uden. Eventually, almost 40 people turned up to see Blind Ego
together with British prog rockers
Credo.
Credo
I saw Credo once
before. Their performance at last year's Progfarm Festival made a deep
impression. Therefore, I would not miss their second live show on Dutch soil.
Right after merchandiser
Mr. Ploppy (Neil Matthards)
introduced the band
"We are Credo and this is what we do", they kicked some ass with
The Game. Wow!

This was certainly the start of a special concert. It is true that the
wonderful guitar sound of
Tim Birrell
and the splendid keyboard playing of
Mike Varty
dominate the music of Credo.
They both give the band their neo progressive rock sound related to
Arena and
early
Marillion.
I think, however, that
Credo
would be less interesting without lead singer
Mark Colton. Every band needs a stage personality, an entertainer
with a strong voice moving around on stage, telling jokes and explaining the
lyrics of a song. Unfortunately, not many people in the audience were familiar with
the music of this incredible band. Some of them gave them a show of hands, while
the song was not even finished. Mark Colton
did not mind at all. While wearing a T-shirt with the
words 'If It Ain't Stiff, It Ain't Worth A Fuck' he introduced a song that
dealt with masturbation called
Skin-trade,
followed by a new piece from
their forthcoming album. However, for some people
Round And Round sounded
familiar, because the song was already on the set list on Progfarm last year.
This song proved that we might look out for a promising third release later
this year.
Too Late...Too Say Goodbye
deals with the First World War and
the loss of so many people's lives during that war. On their way to The
Netherlands, the band visited the war graves in Belgium. At the end of this
beautiful piece of music, you could hear war sounds from tape. After the song,
the band members stood still for a moment as a tribute to all war victims. The
last song of the set was
From The
Cradle...To The Grave, a beautiful piece from
Rhetoric, their second release.
The Letter was the final
song on the set list, but unfortunately, Credo left the stage without
performing it. Bad luck, because I would have loved to hear that song from this
fantastic neo-prog band.
Blind Ego
The most striking
thing in the new line-up of Blind Ego was the lack of a keyboard player. This
time both
Yogi Lang (RPWL)
and bass player
John Jowitt (Arena)
were not invited. Only Jowitt was replaced by
Sebastian Harnack (Sylvan). Just too
bad, because I do believe that keyboards give another dimension to the music.

This time guitarist Kalle Wallner added some extra string synthesizer sounds by
touching his foot on the pedals in front of him. The performance of Blind Ego
was much more guitar orientated. That was probably the reason why
Jochen Goricnik
was on stage.
He played most of the extra heavy rhythm guitar
parts. Towards the end of the show, he got extra solo spots and fought some
guitar battles with Kalle. Lead singer
Paul Wrightson this time was the
only foreigner in the band. He was the only who hailed from England. As always,
Wrightson was dressed in black looking like a hobo trying to sing the songs in the
best possible way.

You could hardly see or hear that he had some serious throat
problems. It was obvious that most of the material performed came from
Numb, but to my surprise, the whole album
got a live treatment.
One of the strong pieces of this album is the
instrumental
Torn.
On stage, it got a lot of energy and therefore sounded
better as the album version. It was a good choice to have a fine acoustic
ballad between all the heavy stuff. During
Risk,
only Kalle accompanied Paul on his acoustic guitar. The song deals with the
feelings of losing a beloved friend. For a moment, the people at the bar were
willing to keep their mouths shut and listened to this wonderful track from
Numb.
High lights during the set were the pieces related to the music made by RPWL.
Songs as
Break You, Numb, Moon And Sun
and
Leave. During those
songs,
Mr. Wallner used all his talents to let his guitar sounds very melodic.
The band was willing to do some encores in spite of the fact that the audience
hardly shouted for more. Kalle and his band mates returned after the regular
set very quickly. They played
Mirror,
the title track from their first album followed by the only song taken from an
RPWL-album:
Someone Else.

This song
can be found on their limited edition release
9.
A guitar
oriented piece that was music wise in the vein of the bands last encore
Breaking The Law and performed with
a lot of power and energy.
This song from
Judas Priest again
proved that Kalle Wallner
has a soft spot for heavy metal music. During the previous concert two years
ago Blind Ego played stuff from
Deep Purple (
Perfect Strangers) and
Queensryche (
Breaking The Silence). That is all right by me as
long as they play the more progressive pieces. I hope that Blind Ego will bring
a keyboard player for their third tour in The Netherlands. I surely missed one!
Henri Strik (edited by Peter Willemsen)
Credo DVD review
Credo CD review