FORGOTTEN SILENCE - KRO NI KA - 2006

Nice, another record that grows with each listen. It has to, since the Czech band Forgotten Silence didn’t make it easy for themselves. Three compositions around twenty minutes come by in a great cover, suggesting the soundtrack for an urban movie. This character is emphasized by the vocal department (whispers, stoical talk, newsflash style), because the night is young and depressing. You can hear the despair of the early hours. This however doesn’t mean the listener is left behind with a depression himself, though you do hear the band’s roots from the doom scene occasionally. A comparison with Riverside seems evident, yet the Polish level is hardly attained. Don’t get me wrong: Forgotten Silence is a band with very competent musicians, who despite their individual talents are foremost concerned with a tight group sound. Guitar and keyboards are varyingly the main carriers for the melody, or they duel with each other. The keys explore different textures, so one moment they adopt a supporting function and another time they open a vintage Tony Banks register. But the real star on this album is the solid rhythm section, providing fine art-rock figures. Okay, Forgotten Silence do tend to repeat themselves; some themes are played for just too long. Things could have been more compact. You also get the impression that there are too few peaking moments. But you can hardly say that this band lacks originality. There’s a challenge in this music. It’s really worth discovering.
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Well out of nowhere, I found one of my new favorite bands! The Czech Republic apparently has a very untapped array of absolutely incredible musicians and interesting ideas, the latest of which being this beauty that I've been waiting to review for some time now: Forgotten Silence. This is a four-piece progressive jazz rock/metal quartet that hails from the Rosice u Brna sector of the Czech Republic. They've had an array of previous members over the years, including a celloist at one time, but with the sound on this album, I can't imagine them getting any better. These songs are long too, ranging from 17:57 to 25:03! Needless to say, everything here was quite interesting indeed.

Initially Forgotten Silence may impose a first impression on you of a jazz rock jam band, simply improvising simle melodies and structures into a catchy line of harmonious notes, but as the album starts rolling on the music gets more and more complex The music is consistent in its rhythm. That is to say, for each song, as a certain simple rhythm is laid down from the very beginning, the band grabs hold of it, and continuously changes it, slowly, to move it into a new direction, with the first track this continues for 8 minutes until an epic heavy ending into silence, then slowly swelling tribal drums with single picked guitar notes behind. There is a certain kind of ethnic sound to be found here as well, not only featuring middle eastern-esque drum rhythms, but also i hear a hint of scandinavian folk in some keyboard melodies. Perhaps thats just me, as i'm not too overwhelmingly educated on the ethnic music subject, but I can only assume. It's around the 9 minute mark of this first track that the music starts getting very interesting featuring almost extreme metal riffage with the interesting ethnic sounds, going into some very felt atmosphereic leads.

Absolutely everything about this release is interesting in beautiful. From the quality of the paper itself in the booklet, to the art found within, to the fact that the band pays homage to their mother tongue by not only including english lyrics, but also flipping the booklet at the halfway mark and re-writing the lyrics there in polish but with the pages upsidown and backwards so you have to flip it around and start from the back again, as if to show equality in importance of both languages. The lyrics themselves are also interesting. Lyrics like the ones at the end of the first page...

"I met myself walking down the street. It was a surprise. I looked like a stranger."

Obviously these lyrics show personal important as well as giving the reader a large amount of directions in which to focus their creative energies in finding a path to take the story further. The really incredible thing about Kro ni Ka is that while the music does at times get pretty heavy and moving, its somehow never manages to get dark. There's never really an overbearing foreboding or angry side to the music. I can't really describe the emotion felt through the music with words. I just know its an interesting experience from start to finish. Every few minutes of this album is like walking around another corner. I can't count how many times I laughed at the absurdity of the incredible amount of talent these musicians have. Kro ni ka was just simply amazing. There's no other way to put it, and I have a feeling this album is going to be in steady rotation in my CD player for a good many months to come. Any progressive music fan would be an absolute FOOL to pass this one up. My only regret is that I'm not nearly this talented as a musician myself, unless there's some secret to writing this style that I don't know. I doubt I could cram 25 minutes worth of these random changes and musical complexities into my brain.

It's a shame this was released in 2006, or it would hold my album of the year spot for 2007. Progressive music really doesn't get any better than this.
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