To the prog community, we have a problem. There is something not clicking with a band called Ferkaad, a band with incredible musicians which consists of Niels van der Steenhoven on lead and rhythm guitars, founder Zigor Munoz on bass, saxophonist Kari Kankare, guest drummer Rob Stone, keyboardist Tim Newcombe, and the who’s who including Dream Theater alumni Derek Sherinian, Peter Shannon, Herman Martinez, and Lex van der Zwall, but the question is why this album never had a gigantic click with me.
Their debut A Different Kind of Animosity is almost an incomplete album that just drags so much, you almost want to say, “Wait a second there’s more than just 19 minutes of improvisation. Where’s the rest of it?” For me, when I was listening to it from beginning to end, I was doing my laundry, vacuuming, and mopping the floor while waiting to hear what happens next, track after track.
Each time, the compositions go into this amazing guitar work done by Steenhoven, you almost want to tell him to take a breather and let others take a chance and go into some symphonic route, not try to make it sound like The Mahavishnu Orchestra on a bad acid trip. I played the entire album on my iPod touch and was expecting to like it and all set to see if my ears will accept it or not. But I didn’t hate it. Even worse, I didn’t care for it that much.
What bothered me the most is that it sounded way too much fusion with no lemon added to the Bloody Mary that makes it a sour taste to my taste buds. For example, on ‘Placatory Gesture’ which is kind of a Tower of Power motif with too much of a samba beat in there, you begin to wonder, there’s more to just 4 minutes, why couldn’t it have been at least 10 minutes? Or is this journey ever going to be on a 2-CD set instead of one CD?
But no, they didn’t. It keeps dragging and dragging with insane guitar lines, fast-pacing drumming which worked well on ‘Verbal Jousting’, but almost like a smooth jazz composition that nearly made me want to go to Whole Foods Market and buy more organic coffee brands instead of highly sugary addicted ones that’ll make my stomach upset, very quickly.
While they are incredible musicians, this wasn’t my cup of coffee. After listening, I nearly wanted to throw it in the pile and just ask the band; “Guys, if you wanted to make a perfect debut album, why would you make it this way? Where’s the heart? Where’s the vibe? Where’s the connection? Did you put it in a dumpster and forgotten about it while driving off into the sunset?”
You want to make a better debut? There are dozens of people who can help Ferkaad them out. Yes, they are incredible musicians, this is not the way to start off their first album out for this year. If I was their stepfather, mind you, I would let them listen to bands such as White Willow, Motorpsycho, and Wobbler, and find out how to do a proper first album correctly and do it in the right way.
