ABRAXAS

“Centurie”
(Metal Mind Records, 1998)

Line Up:
Marcin Blaszczyk: Keys and flute
Szymon Brzezinski: Guitars
Adam Lassa: Voice
Rafal Ratajczak: Bass
Marcin Mak: Drums

After listening to "Centurie" for the first time I had left a doubt: how to classify Abraxas? There are certain elements that bring near a lot to this Polish band to the neo-progressive one (you fear very good but not too much elaborated, typical of the neo, for example) and others that show an astonishing potential, worthy of a superlative group of RPS. But the disk also leaves many certainties: excellent musicians (especially the guitarist that sounds superb), the fidelity to their native language (are all the topics sung in Pole, although there is a version of this same disk in English is it necessary to penetrate in the big markets, no? -), high sense of the melody and the possibility always latent of receiving a surprise in each track. 

In some catalog I read that the sound of Abraxas approached to the Gothic and the hard rock, that which is noticed in certain rhythm changes and in the hardest passages that are inserted with other more rested, but this is not a band of hard rock and much less Gothic. The certain thing is that these Poles have an own sound, difficult to marry with other groups (I am happened something like that as a Marillion or a more dark, more potent and more creative IQ, to mention some reference). 

After the first track ("Spiritus Flat Ubi Vult") something strange, rhythmic and hit, we enter in a sound neo, very melodic and very good, with "Michel of Nostredame". 
With "Velvet", the third -also cut very interesting - the music you melancholic restitution. The nostalgic tonic will stay in the following track ("Excalibur"), but this time the melody is more diverse and more atmospheric, with a delicious flute. This is the first pearl of the disk. 
"Kuznia" is potent and I last and it seems to stay in that style in all its extension, but on the end there is a surprising change. "Czarkramy" is another very changing moment: it begins as a track more neo, but when being averaged restitution watchman and encircling to conclude in a more violent passage. 
"Pokuszenie" is another jewel. It is unwrapped through melancholic and atmospheric, beautiful melodies, to reach an end of simply spectacular guitar. 
The closing of the album deserves a paragraph separated: "Nantalomba" is an incredibly beautiful symphonic track that has the pomp and an air between melancholic and triumphant more favorable for an overture than for an end (it is almost an invitation listen the disk again). 

Summarizing, this is a very good album that will surely please the followers of the neo-progressive one and also to those that we don't finish convincing us with this style (here we have something different from the conventional thing). 

Marcelo Olivera