It took LOGOS thirteen long years to create their third album L’ ENIGMA DELLA VITA (The enigma of life) but it was apparently worth the wait for this is one power house of an album. The only band member to survive into the current lineup is Luca Zerman who handles the keyboards and vocal duties. The album starts out in a spaced out ambient style that makes you wonder if you’ve just put on a Klaus Schulze album but then after a bit the drums kick in and take us into the realms of progressive rock and has a clearly inspired feel by the space rock arena of Pink Floyd with smooth and silky guitar lines. It only takes the addition of vocals sung in Italian to instantly break the spell and make you realize that this is indeed symphonic prog very much inspired by the greats of the 70s, namely PFM, Banco and even Genesis inspired neo-prog at times. Like all great Italian prog bands, the lyrics are in their native tongue and spell out a the concept of a journey across the universe with different tracks representing being human, love, loneliness or war. The album tackles the biggest quandary of all human history that is attempting to find the meaning of life itself.
This album is a major throwback to the 70s greats and has a sound solidly rooted in that golden decade of progressive sounds. There are roaring keyboard swirls and twirls that very much remind of PFM, space bass a la Floyd, pastoral soundscapes that can bring Genesis to mind and so forth and so on but this is an album that is of the modern era as well. The production has been absolutely perfected and illuminates every single little sound to its fullest. There are clear modern influences as well. For example “In Principio” has a clear electronic space sound that reminds me of “Moon Safari” tracks by the French band Air. The guitars are crisp and clean and tasty solos abound with a slight progressive metal edge but never really getting too far in that direction. The interplay between the musicians is always on the highest professional level and each compliments the other always creating a most satisfying sum of the parts.
The beauty of L’ENIGMA is that LOGOS are masters of the subtleties. They excel in developing the most pleasant of melodies and expounding upon them. They especially know how to magically morph from one passage to another and never string anything together in an awkward way. There are no sudden and unwarranted transitions. Everything is strung beautifully and gracefully together so brilliant it shines like a crazy diamond. The diversity of the sounds, tempos, timings and arrangements never once let you drift off in this album’s lengthy 76:03 time frame. That is an achievement in my book since many an album of this length usually begins lose steam halfway through. This album is a remarkable achievement of modern prog that marries the best aspects of the classics with the cutting edge technology that now exists. This is one of the best new albums i’ve heard in a while and I really hope we don’t have to wait another thirteen years for the next release! Highly recommended. One of the best albums of 2014.