LIKE WENDY - THE STORM INSIDE - 1998

Under a few words,the story of LIKE WENDY begun at late 80's-early 90's when a bunch of musicians and prog rock lovers at the same time decided to form their own band and gathered in Haarlem,Netherlands to start their first rehearsals.The results,unfortunately,were not encouraging.Among those guys was multi- instrumentalist Bert Heinen.After the short story of this band,Bert decided to purchase a solo career under the name of LIKE WENDY,taken from Laquiendi people in Tolkien's ''Lord of the rings'',maybe the most influential source of inspiration in prog.After recording some demo tapes with his own stuff,Bert sent these tapes to several companies and magazines in order to gain a contract.Finally in June 1998,LIKE WENDY managed to release their first album entitled ''The storm inside'' under Labrad'or Records.

Obviously this is mostly a one-man effort with just a collaboration with a drummer and contains 8 tracks,most of them being re-recordings of the tracks in Bert's older demo tapes,while the rest of them where total new recorded tracks.In this album Bert shows his clear influences from the progressive rock wave of the 80's.Mostly influenced by bands like IQ,early Hogarth-era MARILLION and PENDRAGON,the whole result is very nice and atmospheric,very close to AFTERGLOW's work ''Yggdrasil''.The tracks are equally split in short ones and over 10.min mini-epics.The later are better with progressibe structure,great keyboards ans lot of space for changing moods and tempos.The short tracks are quite good also,but there are almost ballad-like tracks emphasazing on atmosphere and emotional vocals.Surprisingly for a one-man band,the vocals of Bret are very decent.Despite lacking in vocal range,Bret's voice is very atmospheric adding an extra melodic taste in his music and is lying somewhere between Bryan Ferry of ROXY MUSIC and Peter Nichols of IQ.

Although being melodic,this album is IMHO a grower,several listenings will make you appreciate it more and more...My true rating is 3.5 stars making this album one of the most decent efforts I've ever heard by one-man band.Neo prog fans will find this one a beautiful experience!
http://www.progarchives.com