Seasons Of Time - Welcome To The Unknown - 2018



    

“... an album with two faces.. ...”

intro

Seasons Of Time is an ArtRock band from Bremen, Germany. Next month the band  will release their new album “Welcome to the Unknown”. After their debut album “Behind The Mirror” (1997) and it’s successor “Closed Doors to Open Plains” (2014) this is their third release. A release that has been licensed to Record Jet. After several changes in the lineup, the band split up in 2010. Dirk Berger, the last remaining founder member, kept the band alive as a studio project. With the help of Malte Twarloh on vocals, Florian Wenzel on guitar and Marco Gruehn on drums they released in 2014 their second concept album “Closed Doors to Open Plains”. Fast forward to 2018. Again there are changes in the lineup, Dirk Berger took over the vocals, and Julian Hielscher is now responsible for the drum parts. The album has been recorded in their own little studio in the attic of Dirk’s house.

line-up

Dirk Berger - bass, keyboards, vocals, engineering; Florian Wenzel - guitars; Julian Hielscher - drums

Marco Gruhn - drums on Plans To Make Plans
Christina Mielke - backing vocals on Plans To Make Plans
Elle Voss, Steve Pilkington, Willie C. kimbrough, Kelly Bell - news on Driven To Drive
Anna Makowska - doctor Anna Isor

review

Driving force behind the band is Dirk Berger who besides mixing the album and playing the bass and the keyboards is now also responsible for the vocals. You can find the following six tracks on the album; “Toward The Horizon”, “Plans To Make Plans”, “Dreams Of A Madman”, “Joana”, “Driven to Drive” and “The Last Ship”.

Influenced by the bands of the seventies and the eighties the band tries to develop their own sound. The first part of opener “Toward The Horizon” and the second track “Plans To Make Plans” are not very exciting to me. The vocal melodies are somewhat monotonous. And I really have to get used to the voice of Dirk Berger. But in the second (mostly instrumental) part of the opener you can find lovely keyboard melodies and fine guitar parts. It all becomes a little bit more interesting with the following track “Dreams Of a Madman”. The song has a better diversity and the end is great with lovely keyboard parts and freaky guitar parts. With almost 15 minutes the next song is the longest track of the album. A song of epic proportions and I can gladly inform you that this song with the title “Joana” is absolutely the highlight of the album. There are ballad like parts with nice vocal melodies and delicate piano parts. There is so much more melody in this piece. I would like to mention Florian Wenzel who is playing delicious and melodic guitar parts in this song. The overall atmosphere of this epic is on the mellow side of the progressive rock spectrum. “Driven To Drive” is more uptempo and powerful but has again those monotonous vocals. The album closes with a song called “The Last Ship”. It has a beautiful slow opening with lovely keyboard strings, fine vocals and melodic guitar melodies. The last part of this song is in fact a long soaring guitar solo on top of fine keyboard and synth layers. It has the same quality as the song “Joana”. This is my second personal favorite of the album.

conclusion

Well this was an interesting listening and review session. “Welcome To The Unknown” is for me an album with two faces. As a reviewer I am in the position to listen to a lot of new releases and for those new releases it becomes difficult to stand out and keep the full attention of the listener. This album is not a groundbreaking release, but you can find some interesting pieces of music on it. The two highlights of the album are absolutely the epic “Joana” and the last track “The Last Ship”. This are the pieces which have the so needed diversity and have the most interesting melodies. Just check it out for yourself.

author - date - rating - label

Douwe Fledderus - August 2018 -   - Independent Release (licensed to Record Jet)