KNIGHT AREA - D-DAY II THE FINAL CHAPTER

Ultimately disappointing slab of conceptual rock.

I confess to not having heard the previous concept album, D-Day, from this Dutch collective led by Gerben Klazinga, a very capable keyboard player with former Aryeon vocalist, Jan Willem Ketelaers. A wee bit of a spoiler alert here – I am not the greatest Aryeon fan around. The band describe themselves as “progressive metal”, whilst others have them down as “neo-prog”. Well, one of the whole purposes of my setting up my own website was to progress (ouch, what a pun!) from such narrow confines, but what I will say about this album is that whilst there are some memorable passages and a decent album wanting to break out, I find much of it formulaic and ultimately unsatisfying.

In fact, the highlight of the entire album to me is the second bonus track, somewhat tellingly an instrumental, Orchestral Compilation. I rather wish this had been a part of the main album and, indeed, an overture to what could have been something very interesting had the thematic continued. It is an exceptional symphonic instrumental piece, with perfect orchestration combined with some very effective choral effects. The synths and the piano are warm, and there are some effective and sympathetic signature changes. This band can play, have no doubt about it.

Elsewhere, For Those Who Fell which (very vocally) describes our heroes as going into No Man’s Land, has a gorgeous guitar by Mark Bogert, plaintive and questing. This is another exceptional instrumental and quite lovely. It is, alas, the first track which makes me step away and sit up and take notice.

Actually, the opening track, The Enemy Within, has a very nice expansive start before morphing into a rather traditional hard rocker. There are some very nice bass riffs, but I find the lyrics here, as indeed everywhere, to be rather uninspiring. Mankind has been writing and singing about war since the dawn of time, and, in all honesty, it is one of those ubiquities which requires something magical to stand out from the rest. With all respect to this band and its vocalist, this album is not it.

On I Believe, there is a massively Floyd influenced military passage which then morphs into just about the strangest metal contrast I have heard in a number of years. Altogether rather strange, and not really making a great deal of musical sense, in all honesty. Talking of rockers, The Dream starts off well and expansively before it roars along in an enjoyable, if not entirely original, fashion.

But the epitome of what this album could have been is The Journey Home. There is a warm synth at the opening, telling the migration/retreat story perfectly, and it is a shame that the vocals and lyrics come in, really, because there is a lovely piece here which is somewhat spoilt by “more of the same”. This really should have been an instrumental because some of it is genuinely evocative and the close especially is pretty powerful.

I do not generally like giving overly negative reviews. There are parts of this album which are very decent, but in terms of persuading me to revisit Knight Area’s back catalogue, it does not get there, I am afraid.