Illusions (Grendel, 2008)

When I firts listened to "The Helpless", Grendel's only album to date, I had mixed feelings about it. It sounded to me like pop meets neo-prog and I couldn't decide wheter I liked it or not. But after the last track "Illusions", I definitely made up my mind: yes, I liked this easy but never trivial prog music. This track is a 11:53 minutes always changing composition, full of good ideas and effective sounds. There's almost everything in it, from metal guitars to mellow keyboards and from electronic sound to acoustic phases. Nevertheless, a clever distribution of the sung themes and a nostalgic background give to "Illusions" an inner coherence, despite some abrupt tempo and style changes.

This album is about human despair and sorrow.

Sebastian Kowgier's voice strangely reminds me Mark David Hollis (do you remember Talk Talk?), while Urszula Świder's keyboards and Kowgier's electric guitar are more on the band's notable Marillion side. Some sections of this track are beautiful, like the piano ballad starting  circa at minute 8:30 and the following electric guitar solo, but all the melodies here are pleasant. The whole song is a sensitive, sorrowful epic about human sad condition. Not happy, true, but beautiful if you're searching a less intricate prog for a change. Such a pity they stopped their career after this record...