Tuesday 31 July 2018

Wobbler - Hinterland (2005)


The debut album from this Norwegian band.

Wobbler was a quintet with a lineup of guitars, bass, drums, clavinet, mellotron, minimoog, harpsichord, grand piano, saxophones, drums, percussion, glockenspiel and vocals.
The band had help from guest musicians providing flutes, percussion, baroque guitar and backing vocals.

Wobbler is one of the leading lights in the Norwegian prog rock scene and with good reasons. This is one of the albums who re-started and kicked the Norwegian prog rock scene into life again.

I have reviewed their second and third album for Progarchives. I liked those two albums, Afterglow (2009) and Rites At Dawn (2011) a lot. I have also got their 2017 album and will review it very soon too.

Hinterland is a mix of Swedish symphonic prog rock (Kaipa etc etc), folk rock and symphonic prog. The band has also incorporated the Norwegian symphonic prog rock sound from the 1970s and the 1980s into this album. This album is in that respect a bridge between the old and the new scene.

The music is pretty big and complex on this one hour long album. There is some King Crimson references in the music and a lot of strange and wonderful time-shifts.

The melodies are also pretty strange. Strange and captivating.

The overall quality is very good throughout this album. It is an album still relevant today and one who still deserves to be played.......... a lot.

3.5 points

1 comment:

  1. This is really a 5-star album in my opinion along with their quite different and very Yes sounding Rites at Dawn album. Afterglow is right behind them. Haven't heard the latest yet but that'll soon be rectified.

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