VERBAL DELIRIUM: So Close And Yet So Far Away (PROGRESSIVE ROCK,Alternative Rock): review / opinion to read on Music Waves

If Greece is famous for its sunshine, olive trees, old stones and enchanting islands, it is less known for its progressive rock bands. Certainly, there was Aphrodite's Child at the end of the 60s, before Demis Roussos started a career as a variety singer and Vangelis turned to electronic music, especially for the cinema. We can also quote La Tulipe Noire and its neo-progressive Rock or Ciccada and its bucolic and soothing progressive. And that's about it. Of course, there are a few other Hellenic groups playing our favourite music, but they are very few in number and have a very confidential aura.

So it's worth highlighting Verbal Delirium for its strong personality and because its leader, John 'Jargon' Kosmidis, has just released under the pseudonym Jargon one of the best progressive rock albums of 2020. Formed around the nucleus constituted by John Kosmidis and Nik Michailadis in 1999, it was not until the end of 2010 that Musea produced the band's first album, "So Close and Yet So Far Away". The founding duo is reinforced by the guitars of Nikitas Kissonas, the drummer having only the status of guest. Drums are a particularly unstable position in Verbal Delirium as we will see in the following albums.

If the diversity of "So Close and Yet So Far Away" makes it seem like a progressive movement, most of the tracks on the record have the immediacy of alternative rock, the vocals, theatrical but not too much, give it a gothic luster and the guitars with saturated riffs metal airs, all in a melancholic coating of the most fitting.

Piano and guitars dominate the debates, creating a perfectly balanced alternation between softness and vivacity. John Kosmidis's inhabited vocals, in turn moving, disturbing, melodramatic or confidential, could remind us of Peter Hammill's performances (The magnificent 'They' with its gothic accents). The very dark 'O.K.' is more on the side of Van der Graaf Generator, a VDGG mixed with Uriah Heep, by the atmosphere created by the trio guitar-bass-drums and underlined by a sepulchral organ.

The influences are numerous (The Cure on 'Lullaby', Muse on 'Erased', the new wave of Ultravox on 'Time'...) but so well integrated in a more personal music that the band gives off a strong personality that owes nothing to anyone. The very direct and immediate tracks ('So Close And Yet So Far Away', 'Dancing Generation', 'Erased', 'Time') alternate with others more tortuous but never obscure ('Lullaby' with a short dissonant break, 'The Scene Remains', 'O.K.') or with the melancholic softness dominated by the piano-vocals of John Kosmidis ('Ervelet', 'They', 'Reprise').

"So Close and Yet So Far Away", at the same time accessible and complex, proves to be a beautiful album, balanced between soft and vigorous passages, between guitars and keyboards, between instrumental and sung moments, diversified but homogeneous. A perfectly successful first draft. - Official website

VERBAL DELIRIUM

SO CLOSE AND YET SO FAR AWAY

MUSEA

PROGRESSIVE ROCK