NOVALIS - LETZTES KONZERT (LIVE, 2 CD) - 1984

ABSOLUTE MASTERPIECE BY A LITTLE UNKNOWN BAND!

During the last few days I listened to many different albums from multiple genres ranging from rare seventies prog like RAGNAROK, CONVENTUM or JAN DUKES DE GREY to recent innovative progmetal ones like ISIS, KAYO DOT or SECRET CHIEFS 3. But I couldn't say that any of those ones fascinated me as much as did CHAOS CODE's third output. It's definitely their most mature and professional work so far. Though being deeply rooted in early seventies hard prog with their style none of the tracks is sounding derivative at all but rather fresh. It's hard to name any band they sound like because there isn't or wasn't just any. Closest comparison coming to my mind would be ECHOLYN (a band I love as well), but more due to the similarity of the voices. Some influences like VDGG which is one of my top favs certainly could be mentioned, especially on account of the heavy use of brass. The production quality here became much better than on the previous releases as well the art work which is rather provocative.

The album starts right from the beginning very powerful with "The Chameleon" which is an progressive heavy rocker dominated by guitar and horns especially in its second half. The short instrumental piece "Calling to Shadows" serves as a kind of interlude and is putting the mood more towards a relaxed and calm atmosphere with acoustic guitar, sax and finally some nice flute. But "New Domination" is raising the energy level again with heavy guitars reminding to early Sabbath and VDGG-alike brass combined with short keyboard sections in between. "Last Assignment" with 13 minutes + the longest track is dominated by a superb rhythm section and keyboards in its first part before guitar is taking over and alternating with great keyboard sections. This one has been very nicely placed in the track order after the quite heavy first and third one and is a welcome opportunity to calm down a bit. It's an absolute highlight of the album with nice melodies which are still quite memorable despite of the high complexity. The instrumental one "Revising History" starts atmospheric with dreamy and spacey synths before an awesome intricate guitar and drum play sets in. "Saturated" is a very furious track with quite aggressive vocals, heavy guitars and brass. This one goes without any break into the short "Bacon for Swine". "Fortune Cookie Leaflet", again an instrumental track with great guitar, drums and sax closing with spacey synth sequences is certainly another highlight. "In the Revealing Light of Betrayal" continues with keyboards and guitar and is again a sort of interlude cross-fading directly into the final track which picks up again the main theme from the opener and closes the circle like this in a very nice way.

Needless to mention that apart from composition, songwriting and musicianship their lyrics are absolutely top notch and extremely critical, thought- and meaningful. Everybody who was still uncertain about this band after their first two albums should be convinced that CHAOS CODE is one of the best (less known) bands nowadays after listening to this one. Unless many newer bands in Symphonic Progressive they don't sound at all just like a blueprint of famous seminal ones. For me there isn't any doubt left that it deserves nothing else than the full score. I just can tell to anyone looking for some really great music to not miss this one!
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