BRIGHTEYE BRISON - BELIEVERS & DECEIVERS
Written by Claude 'Clayreon' Bosschem, www.prog-nose.org

Believers & Deceiver is already the third album by Swedish Brighteye Brison, apparently the moment for a change of members, drummer Daniel Kase was replaced by Erik Hammerström. The last album 'Stories' was already a winner and a perfect example of modern retroprog, the expectations were very high. They consider themselves this album as their most progressive, and with epics of respectively 20 and 34 minutes this seems a certitude.
But the album starts with 2 shorter tracks: a funky bass introduces 'Pointless Living' as a progressive piece of work, especially where the Gentle Giant-piece comes in, as well as the catchy chorus. Although this is with his 5 minutes the shortest song of the album, it contains all the ingredients that are typical for this group: the use of analog 'vintage' instruments, polyphonic vocals and excellent compositions. "After the storm" sounds a bit more Canterbury and is full of special rhytms and breaks, often doing the voice acrobacy that reminds me of 10cc, and an excellent guitar solo on top. But for true symphonic rock, you have to listen to the longer songs, a church organ in "The Harvest" marks the beginning of a rollercoaster of pace and mood changes, like Yes and Genesis, without forgetting their countrymen The Flower Kings. Very particular in the music of Brighteye Brison also remains the diversity of the keyboards, Linus Kase is an excellent musician. The jazzy touch is like on previous albums present by the use of wind instruments, a bit surprisingly ex-drummer Daniel Kase plays the trumpet here. The atmospheric and ambient sounding chorus is also reminiscent of The Alan Parsons Project. Many groups would already have lack of inspiration, but here the best is yet to come. "The Grand Event" is a progressive musical climax, in which all the influences of the seventies are present, while it sounds quite modern. Actually, this number contains actually 10 or more tracks, at about 5 minutes there is a typical Gentle Giant snippet, which once again showcases the vocal abilities of all members. Some people will perhaps have more trouble with the saxophone-passages, which obviously sound pretty jazzy. But these fragments are rather short, the symphonic parts clearly prevail. Of course it is not obvious for a listener to be captivated for over 35 minutes, but the variety, complexity and melody makes this song very enjoyable.
I must frankly confess that after first listening to this CD my rating was lower, mainly because I did compare it with their last album 'The Stories. " But actually, "Believers&Deceivers' showed to be a growing cd and it now belongs to my progressive highlights of 2008. It is now really clear, that you have to be in Sweden for good progressive rock.

Rating: 9/10