Arilyn - Tomorrow never comes - 2002
intro
"Tomorrow never comes" is the debut album of German band Arilyn. Although they describe their music as “space rock”, I think this is not the right qualification. Spacey sounds in between the individual songs, synthesized keyboard sounds and some occasional “phased” guitar chords are hardly arguments for this qualification, that emerged when bands and artists like Hawkwind and Steve Hillage became popular. The music of those bands and artists was dominated by sometimes freaky and lengthy guitar solos and that is something this album really misses.
review
Apart from melodic themes, most of the time we hear the guitarist Jürgen Kaletta in the role of rhythm guitarist. Next to that is there not much adventures to be found on this album, so the adjective “progressive” doesn’t apply either. That leaves us with the term “traditional” rock with some symphonic and spacey influences. Christian Külbs performs adequately as a (hard)rock singer, where his bass guitar is not very explicitly present, which also applies to the drums of Christof Doll. Especially when listening with earphones I found the production of the rhythm section rather poor, which causes the music to lose much of its power. Responsible for the most interesting parts of the sound of Arilyn is therefore keyboard player Jürgen Mossgraber. He produces some fine sounds with his keyboards and thus makes it all worthwhile, because as mentioned before, the compositions on this album are musically seen not more than average. Some of the songs remind of Uriah Heep (during their seventies period): powerful vocals, energetic distorted guitar riffs and chords and atmospheric keyboards, although with no so much of the organ sounds of this band. Compliments are in place for the lyrics and the guiding text on the CD inlay.
The album contains thirteen songs with a total running tine of almost 64 minutes. It opens with “Alpha” (1:21) an ambient/spacey introduction which is followed by “New world” (3:46) an up-tempo rocker that and gives a good picture of the sound of this band. “Far away” (4:54) is introduced by a wah wah guitar playing a melodic theme and has a structure that is typical for most songs of the album: a melodic intro with some guitar or keyboard notes, ballad-like couplets, refrains with more heavy guitar riffs and chords and nice keyboards sounds and solos. “Foreign shores” (4:35) features a nice unison guitar/synthesizer solo, as does track 9, “Return” (4:43) a more ballad like song with a nice church organ and some other pleasant keyboard parts. “Nightmare” (3:29) opens again with some guitar notes on a rolling bass, as the atmospheric song “Adventurer” (4:43) does with jungle sounds, a phased guitar and a synthesizer melody. A nice guitar theme introduces the rock ballad “State of desperation” (5:19): an easy first half, an up-tempo and more heavy mid part and than a short reprise of the opening part. Nice but we‘ve heard it before. The same goes for “Nameless” (5:28), another typical rock ballad. I wonder what these church bells and helicopters do in space?. “Rescue me” (7:42) is a rather varied song with recurring relaxing and pleasant keyboard solos on plucking guitars and “Reach you” (7:15) is a song of the same kind with an atmospherically piano/keyboard introduction and a pleasant melodic guitar theme. “Mindeater” (3:47) is a up-tempo rock song, with typical rocking guitar chords an a short wah wah guitar solo. The last song of the album “Tomorrow never comes” (6:43) commences moody, with the sounds of crickets on a summer evening and a nice electric piano melody, and holds some surprises in the form of female vocals and violin.
conclusion
“Thank you for flying with Arilyn airlines, have a nice day”.
All in all an average album, which stands because of a good concept and fine lyrics, a powerful vocalist and interesting keyboards. I like the longer tracks in this album most and would certainly invite this band to explore more in this direction, of course with some real guitar solos.