Mekong Delta
Visions Fugitives

One thing should be specified right away: the Mekong Delta are insane. How could it be otherwise when you decide to combine classical elements with hard and pure metal, two worlds - apparently - light-years apart, creating a whirlwind of emotions that until those years (we are in 1994) had no equal. Crazy, yes...but also ingenious.

The release of ''Visions Fugitives'', the sixth studio album by the pioneers of Progressive/Thrash (recognition to be shared with the Swiss band Coroner) was greeted by the metal world as one of the most innovative and influential works ever spawned, having the particularity and charm of possessing two well-distilled musical sides: the ''evil'' techno-thrash one of the first and last two compositions and the ethereal one of the central suite, itself divided into six chapters. As for the thrash pieces, it takes no more than a few seconds to understand the musical approach followed by the Germans at the attack of the opener ''Them'': sharp and sophisticated power-rooted riffs blend with the labyrinthine rhythmic section (headed by a fearsome performance by Peter Haas behind the drums) and hand in hand with Doug Lee's bizarre voice (a cross between Snake from Voivod and Buddy Lackey from Psychotic Waltz) provide the sense of eccentricity that has always been characteristic of the band. ''Imagination'' confirms the musical quality of our guys with its high tempo, a result of the constant interplay between bass and guitar (in the Watchtower style, so to speak) while short acoustic breaks appear (''Days Of Sorrows'') and odd-time segments fitting the chorus (''The Healer'') in the manner of the early Sieges Even. The four aforementioned tracks all have one point in common: the mix is overall too dark, and the atmosphere thus created comes across as forcibly unsettling, a component that, in some passages, adds a touch of discomfort.

The central suite (composed entirely by the mind of the group, bassist Ralph Hubert) is, as I hinted earlier, a brilliant example of classical music composed by a metal band: after a nice clean guitar opening, ''Preludium'' introduces slow and tortuous symphonic passages followed by harrowing sounds of violin in the background; almost a perfect soundtrack for a horror film. ''Allegro'' is decidedly the heaviest part, the result of the perfect mixing of the malignant portion of thrash with the ecstatic one of classical: pure poetry. Listen to believe. ''Dance'' leaves you bewildered with its avant-garde elements, so dear in the following years to various Arcturus, Ulver, and the like until the blissful arpeggios of ''Postludium'' dissolve the dark chaos that had been determined thus far.

''Visions Fugitives'', in its musical conception, is undoubtedly an album worthy of open-scene applause, however, the sound of the synths in the orchestral parts of the suite is excessively academic (most likely due to low-budget political choices) and even the production and mixing, for the high standard of the compositions, leaves a lot to be desired to the point of making one believe that, with everything in its place, this platter could have become an absolute masterpiece on par with ''Dances Of Death'' and ''The Music of Erich Zann'' from previous years.

Exciting but also somewhat jarring.