It took only thirty years before the Finnish band Pax Romana released their début album ”Trace Of Light”.
Brothers Höytämö set up the band in 1970´s in Sonkajärvi, in Eastern Finland. Band was active for couple of years, but because of studies etc., they didn´t have a chance for recording an album at that time. In 2002 members of the band met again, and they had a bunch of succesfull gigs in Finland. Also new material came out easily.Possibilities for making an album were better now, and finally, here it is.
Pax Romana plays delicious, straightforward and variable prog-rock. What is striking in this band is their two vocalists. They sound totally different, but both of them fit perfectly in to the music.
“Pilgrim”, consisting of three parts, begins with peaceful quitar a´la Andy Latimer, and mellow keyboard waves. So it goes to the second part, in which the the vocalist number one steps in (no idea at all who is singing, and what he is singing about). His voice reminds me of Andy Latimer, leader of Camel. This song goes on in a nice middle tempo. Impressive keyboard solo is quite neo-prog and might be influenced by the album “Skeem”, made by Frech band Skeem.
Guitar solo has a high Camel content and I could listen more of this kind of quitar playing. Third part goes on quite peacefully and Kalle Fält´s flute comes along. Recording of the intensive flute part is brilliantly natural, so that you can even here the flute player breathing.
Three fine parts, but for me it´s a great puzzle why these parts have to form a song. You can hardly find anything common between these parts.
Short “Sad Song” gets us to know vocalist number two. From his voice you can here what whisky and cigars can do to you. His voice is deliciously rough, and surely brings a little bit of Joe Cocker to your mind. This song goes on in a quite straightforward style without any remarkable parts, but on the whole the song sounds OK. “Moonlight Meadow” includes great sello playing and couple of blues type quitar solos and powerful singing.
One of the best songs is the “Ancient Queen and Modern Ladies” mostly because of the vocalist number two. With his rough voice he creates a warm atmosphere. Also the saxophone solo is working fine.
After this it seems that the band has shot their bullets. Little by little it feels like getting bored. “From The Mist Rows The Bard” doesn´t sound bad at all, but the trivial chorus flattens the feeling.
Anyway the keyboards and quitar are working fine together, and that is the highlight of this song.
I was quite frustrated by the fact that there are ten tracs in the CD, but only nine on the cover of the album. After reasearching for a while I found the reason for this careless mistake. Intro for the “Deelpy Connected” is forming a separate track and after this the song continues.
A bit too little is happening in this song to keep you intrested all the time. Instrumental “Evening Breeze”, lasting as much as two minutes, is quite short, but forms a solid and tasty outro for this pleasant and sophisticated album. (Marten Goossens)