Sylvan
Sceneries

It has just been released and no one is paying attention to it... It's the new work from the German band Sylvan. It was predictable, after all. We are indeed talking about a band that, despite their deserving way of expressing themselves, receives decidedly little attention in the spaces reserved for prog, which often forget to mention this band when talking about neo-prog. However, I've been listening to them for more than two years and I was definitely looking forward to this "Sceneries". But let's take a step back, not too far back.

The last two works, named "Presets" and "Force Of Gravity", seemed to want to take the band to more markedly pop territories. Although they maintained the delicate and emotionally expressive sound of their previous works, they presented (especially "Presets") songs with a simpler and more concise structure, much more verse-chorus, foregoing particularly sophisticated passages and typically more prog solutions. Therefore, the anticipation for the new album could create some perplexity for those familiar with the band, making them fear that the band had definitively channeled into more "easy" territories.

"Sceneries", however, sets aside this phase and brings Sylvan back to more sophisticated structures and more elaborate tracks. What I wanted, let's say. I really enjoyed hearing the more easy side of Sylvan, but I believed it should be just a brief phase and I wanted a return to more prog structures. This album not only brings them back to more elaborate structures but even exaggerates: indeed, it consists of a double CD composed solely of suites! 5 long suites, divided into movements, that contain all the typical elements of the Sylvan sound: the delicate guitar parts, the solos full of feeling and never technical, the soft keyboard parts, and there's a noticeable emphasis on the caressing piano parts and orchestral arrangements, often directing the sound towards a symphonic rock. Once again, Marco Glühmann's vocal performance is thrilling, whom I consider one of the most expressive singers on the scene, and I know what I'm saying! His voice appears as usual very suffering, vibrant, dramatic, almost depressive, it almost seems to express discomfort. It can be said here that Sylvan have returned to that introspective, intimate, and delicate prog that characterized their best works, namely "Artificial Paradise", "X-Rayed", and "Posthumous Silence" (the band's most inspired period, after the more overtly neo-prog beginnings). However, it must be said that the aforementioned albums showed greater originality in the solutions, perhaps because of the greater attention paid to certain guitar passages and effects and keyboard sounds, whereas here there is a slightly imperceptible drop in inspiration, a little lack of certain particular guitar solutions is felt. For these reasons, I consider it slightly below the mentioned works.

But the album still offers 90 minutes of intense emotions and its sound, as always very intimate, is recommended to anyone who wants to listen to something that perhaps makes them reflect on their own life, joys, disappointments, difficult moments, and obstacles encountered... The only thing I criticize... is the choice to split the suites into audio tracks. It is a choice I consider unfortunate because, in my opinion, it tends to break the continuity and flow of each suite, as well as make them difficult to follow. Therefore, I recommend, if you have the appropriate program to edit the tracks, to combine the tracks that make up each suite so as to have 5 audio files corresponding to each of the 5 suites and listen to them without being disturbed by the inconvenient and distracting fragmentation. Unfortunately, I won’t see it very often on the list of 2012 releases, they'll probably continue to ignore this band... But in the meantime, I listen to them and recommend them!