Decca
Good musical guilty pleasures are few and far between these days, but the East Village Opera Company comes to the rescue with its third release, an amalgam of ’70s rock excess and bombast fused with some of the finest operatic melodies.
Tempus Fugit/SPV/InsideOut
RPWL’s latest release contains “This Is Not a Prog Song,” a title easily tweaked to “This Is Not (Your Grandfather’s) Prog Band.” Drummer Manni Muller (who took over for Phil Paul Rissettio), bassist Chris Postl, guitarist Karlheinz Wallner and singer/keyboardist Jurgen “Yogi” Lang make music that lacks bombast yet retains the ethereal synthesizer and cosmic guitar playing normally associated with traditional prog outfits.
Inside Out
Michael Sadler knows when to call it a day: After a couple of so-so studio albums and a pair of live releases (the first a fair performance of 1981’s “Worlds Apart” LP, the second an excellent harvesting of all the “Chapter” songs originally strung out across seven nonconsecutive albums), the master of the bombastic vibrato is leaving the Canadian prog-rock group.
Inside Out
Sweden’s Flower Kings have one hell of a work ethic: 11 years, nine studio albums, four of them double albums. Not to mention side-project and solo releases.
