Time to cross back over into Eastern Europe, and take a walk on the slightly wild side beyond what used to be the Iron Curtain, into a land which was once the powerhouse and engine room of what was the USSR, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, which contained many countries and territories which are now autonomous – Kazakhstan, Georgia, Moldova, Ukraine --- and which has never really been seen seriously as a home for progressive rock. In fairness, nothing about Russia has ever been progressive: they were one of the poorest countries, even after World War II, stuck in a post-Stalin era of repression and paranoia and mistrust that led to the Cold War and the world coming close to the brink of destruction in 1963. Change came slowly to the Soviet Union, mostly thanks to the efforts of Mikhail Gorbachev, and with the fall of the Berlin Wall a new era had seemed to dawn for the people on the wrong side of that awful eyesore.
But now Russia seems to have regressed rather than progressed, as Vlad the Impaler reaches out his long arms and starts to grab back territory that had been ceded years ago as the Soviet Union split up and Communism collapsed, and more and more of what were Soviet citizens clamoured for release from the yoke of Mother Russia, aching for independence and desperate to chart their own future. Can you think of any big Russian bands? Me neither. I'm sure they're there, but let's be honest, Russia is not the first country that comes to mind when you think of any music, least of all progressive rock.
Which is what makes this latest album in our countdown even more special.
Megadream --- Azazello
Originally beginning life (it says here) as a thrash/death metal band, Azazello have released a total to date of eight albums, of which this is the latest. As they began to leave the death metal influence behind more on each successive album, elements of progressive rock and metal began to creep into their music, along with other genres like funk, jazz, fusion and of course traditional Russian folk melodies. I haven't listened to their other albums --- I wasn't even aware of their existence until now --- but from what I can hear it seems like they may have achieved their zenith here. This album is full of all the kind of music you would expect, and a lot you would not. It alternates between heavy progressive metal and almost classical at times, with a healthy dose of jazz and straight-ahead rock too.
“Zero hour” stars us off with a slow piano and mournful violin before a nice little guitar line joins in and then a thick bass line from guest Kerry “Kompost” Chicoine starts the main melody as the drums come in hard and fast courtesy of Vladamir Demokov. Much of this album is instrumental, and the opener is the first of these, with hard guitars warring with strings-like keyboards as band founder and main composer Alexandr Kulak fences with his brother, I assume, Vladamir, before the whole thing piles into the first vocal track. With a great progressive metal feel reminiscent of bands like Kamelot and Shadow Gallery, “A losing game” showcases Alexandr's many talents, as on this album he not only plays guitars (including seven-string ...
seven string??) but keyboards, flute, percussion and bass. A real all-rounder.
Vocals are handled by Yan Zhenchak, though Alexandr is credited as “voice”, so I wonder if his is the dark growly vocal going on in the background? Very metal indeed. Very death metal. I've been racking my brains trying to think who these guys sound like and now I know, though it will mean nothing to you, unless you read my review of their album way back when and had the good sense to pick it up. Though they only ever seemed to release the one album, Silent Edge impressed the hell out of me with “The eyes of the shadow”, and this is exactly the same effect this album has had on me. I'm not saying Azazello are copying the Americans, far from it, but there are similarities certainly. Of course Silent Edge are virtually unknown and will probably remain so, and it's entirely possible that the Russian lads have never heard of them. Still...
There's great power and drama in the second track, with some fine keyboard work from Vladamir and chugging guitars both from Alexandr and guest Bill Berends, and it's one of the two longest tracks on the album, just over nine minutes long. You can hear the jazz influences coming in here, sort of a little freeform at times, then the title track is another instrumental, allowing a chance for breath to be caught in a nice little laidback tune with overtones of West Coast America in it, before it gets a little more dramatic and heavy thanks to some doomy synth from Vlad, choral vocals and dark guitar leading to a nice organ line with surf effects bringing in some more lovely violin and flute, very atmospheric.
“Across the frontier” kicks it all back up again with another longish song, seven minutes plus, utilising talk box guitar and powerful drumming, a burbling, skittering keyboard line before the vocal comes in, and the harmonies here are a joy to behold. I believe Azazello used always sing in their native Russian on previous albums, but here, any vocals are in English, which is always a plus. Mind you, with music this good I wouldn't have minded had it been in Russian. “Across the frontier” really rocks, with some savage guitar from Berends and a dark synthy backdrop against which Vlad peppers some jumping keys. You can certainly hear the legacy of their death metal roots here, and these guys definitely know how to play. But they have definitively left their thrash/death days behind them now for a more technical and indeed progressive approach to their music, though I would have to catalogue this as more prog metal than prog rock.
Another short instrumental follows, the shortest track in fact at less than two minutes, but “Between two worlds” leads into one of the other longer tracks, again just over nine minutes as “Nothing but a shade” hits, and it's something of a cross between Manowar and Bathory at their Viking best. A real workout on the guitars from both Alexandr and Berends takes us into a marching bassline that almost comes within a whisker of Genesis's “The colony of Slippermen”, then the hard guitar punches the metal back into the track, and it's well over two minutes before the vocal comes in. When it does, it's a joint vocal, adding some female and some unclean vocals in too. Very effective. I can see crowds headbanging to this: my own head is nodding as I type.
This is probably the most progressive of the songs on the album, building into a multi-layered melody that just awes me. And yet it remains heavy as a neutron star fragment. A great keyboard line from Vlad rides along the main melody line, but it's the guitars that mostly drive this epic. The vocals alternate between clean and unclean, keeping a sense of darkness and doom about the piece despite its mainly upbeat tempo. The almost harpsichordal piano then that opens “Live to see tomorrow” is something of a relief, the song itself a mid-paced almost ballad with some really nice restrained guitar and a yearning vocal from Zhenchak. I hear Arena, Pendragon and even at times It Bites in this song, and it's much different to what has gone before.
That in fact seems to be one of the strengths of Azazello: they can fuse different genres and subgneres, pull in disparate influences and shape them to their own needs, so that it's very hard to pin the band down or pigeonhole them. You sort of really don't know what's going to come next. “Live to see tomorrow” is a case in point: it's almost commercial, something you could in theory imagine hearing on the radio, while much of the rest of their material, despite being excellent, would never grace the airwaves or anything other than a specialist show. Some lovely high-octave piano work from Vlad here really adds to the melody, taking us into “Carnal caravan”, where the boys kick out the stays once again and rawk the house.
It's the last long track at just over seven minutes and runs again on a hard angry guitar line, and speaking of angry the vocal is dark and ragged, with much of it taken by the unclean vocalist. Some very technical guitar is displayed here and a lot of energy, much of it dark. In contrast, a forlorn piano line and haunting violin take “On the other side” in a soft lament very much rooted in the Russian folk song style. Some exquisite guitar here too, very soulful and intense, and a quite gorgeous acoustic guitar and piano combination close what is the last instrumental on the album, leaving us with ... well.
If I have one bad thing to say about this album it is this: it ends on “Run in parallel (Leo)”, which features a great James Taylor-style laidback guitar but utilises the sound of a baby (presumably the Leo in the subtitle) giggling, and hard-hearted old
fuck that I am, the sound of a baby laughing sets my teeth on edge and is like poison to me.
I'm just like Moe. There's some nice sort of choral singing but I think it may be on the synth, a la-la-la-la sort of thing. It's interesting certainly, and I'm sure it's one of the guys celebrating the birth of his child, but for me it's just too weird and I hate that it ends the album. It's like Stevie Wonder's “Isn't she lovely” --- great song but I just hate the baby noises. Urgh.
TRACKLISTING
1. Zero hour
2. A losing game
3. Megadream
4. Across the frontier
5. Between two worlds
6. Nothing but a shade
7. Live to see tomorrow
8. Carnal caravan
9. On the other side
10. Run in parallel (Leo)
I guess this just proves, as if more proof were needed, that I need to expand my knowledge of prog rock beyond the usual national boundaries I stick to. We've already heard some amazing music from Greece, The Ukraine and Argentina, and will soon experience the delights of Spain, Mexico and more. There is a wealth of talent, obviously, waiting out there beyond the horizon, and from these shores I've set sail to discover and uncover it. My voyage has so far been very successful, and I can only look forward to the tales I'll have to tell when I make landfall back home again.
Which is a very pretentious and Trollheartlike way of saying I need to stop restricting myself to bands from the countries I usually listen to music from, and also stop worrying too much about songs being sung in English. Azazello, to be fair, do sing in English here but as I said even if they didn't I'd still think this is a great album. It certainly deserves the term progressive, even if it is more on the metal side than the rock, and without question deserves its place here on the list.
The final track impacts a little on my rating for “Megadream”, though in fairness although it bugs me it doesn't come close to ruining the album for me, so it's not going to take too much off the final score. I therefore believe this album is very much entitled to a rating of
8.8/10.