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Rock
Opera's, don't you just love em! We've recently had the like so the
Ayreon concepts, and the best so far the Avantasia project, and now we
certainly have the most epic and anticipated of the lot.
Years in the making (the orchestra started recording in 1998!) this is
the story of the famous French prophet Nostrodamus. Featuring a four
piece band, seven vocalists a thirty five piece orchestra and over 100
minutes of music where do you start!
Kotzev was the guitar brains behind the three Brazen Abbot albums and
has brought several of the guest singers over with him. I might add you
will definitely require the assistance of the lavish booklet for
untangling the complicated story and lyrics and finding who's singing
where. It really is an extremely inventive and creative piece and
musically it cannot be faulted.
All of the vocalists get into their parts and the commitment of
performance is obvious. With the quality of Glenn Hughes/Goran Edman/Jorn
Lande/Joe Lynn Turner/Doogie White/Alannah Myles and Sass Jordan what
would you expect?
The band apart from Kotzev (g & violin) is the Europe/Clockwise
backline of Ian Haughland (d), John Leven (b) and Mic Micheli (organ).
JLT plays Nostrodamus and I haven't heard him sing this well in years.
The duet 'Try to Live Again' with Myles is awesome as is 'Henriette',
which starts off like Bryan Adams and features Kotzev on superb violin.
The rock songs are very much in the Purple/Rainbow vein and special
mention here goes to Glenn Hughes (Henry II). On the melodic
opener 'Pieces of a Dream', 'I Don't Believe' (with Lande) and the hard
blues of 'Caught Up In a Rush' the guy reigns supreme. The best songs
are on CD 1, but check out the mighty 'Chosen Man' on CD 2 which
features a duet between JLT and Glenn Hughes, breathtaking stuff.
An amazing release no doubt, the only problem (for me anyway) is how
many times would you play it all the way through? Rumour has it that
Disney wants to do a film of the story (what a soundtrack!!!)
(This review
was brought to you courtesy of The Groove Machine.)
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