This album sets itself up so well. An avant-garde jazz metal fusion bonanza thing of an album like 'Maze' needs to go straight for the jugular and, in the mind boggling 'Brick', it does just that. With more than a slight twinge of Norwegian loony geniuses Shining, it turns up and flattens listeners before they have a chance to even think what it is that is actually going on. Sadly, 'Maze', whilst always threatening to do the same thing again, never quite manages to quite keep hold of the listeners it has flawed early on.
There are some brilliant moments of course. 'DBST' and 'Harm' are so wonderfully mental that they make perfectly sane people want to give the next stranger they see a gigantic warm hug and kick them in the midriff at the same time. Unfortunately though, despite proving beyond doubt that they are capable of bold and intriguing experiments, trioVD seem to spend too much of their time thinking about how to come across as utterly barmy and not enough time considering how they are going to fit their schizophrenic musical personalities into actual songs.
The run of four tracks after the opener adequately displays the problem this record has. There are plenty of interesting ideas but they are either not allowed to progress anywhere or drowned out by something else. One cannot help but wonder why this album is less than forty minutes when half of the songs could have done with being stretched out a little more to allow some assimilation of what is going on. 'Maze' isn’t at all bad, but perhaps a little less than the sum of its parts.
'Maze' is out on Monday via Naim.
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There are some brilliant moments of course. 'DBST' and 'Harm' are so wonderfully mental that they make perfectly sane people want to give the next stranger they see a gigantic warm hug and kick them in the midriff at the same time. Unfortunately though, despite proving beyond doubt that they are capable of bold and intriguing experiments, trioVD seem to spend too much of their time thinking about how to come across as utterly barmy and not enough time considering how they are going to fit their schizophrenic musical personalities into actual songs.
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