Album Review: POOR GENETIC MATERIAL – One Day In June

QuiXote Music [Release date 31.05.13]

In the last couple of years or so the number of progressive rock concept albums released has been going through the roof.

Always known as a genre that spawned over-indulgence on an epic scale – eventually rent asunder by the coming of punk – there is a real possibility of a re-spawning being underway.

Back in 2011, I reviewed Poor Genetic Material’s previous outing ‘Island Noises’, a sprawling double concept album based on William Shakespeare’s ‘The Tempest’ to which I gave a four-star rating as it was a top effort.

So can you have too much of a good thing? Well, yes you can actually.

‘One Day In June’ is a concept album based on one of literature’s more impenetrable works – James Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’ – and in their attempt to adapt the novel musically the band have fallen into one of music’s great elephant traps where the story is so complex to tell that the vocals totally dominate the work.

In order to achieve the band’s vision they recruited Phil Griffiths’ (PGM’s singer) father Martin, erstwhile vocalist from early ‘70s proggers, Beggar’s Opera, to share the vocal duties.

The trouble is they sound very similar and, truth be told, a wee bit lightweight for the subject matter. This, together with the over-use of vocals (rather in the way that Meatloaf does – albeit in a totally different genre) makes the whole thing sound like a project rather than a cohesive album.

This is a great shame as when the instrumentation does get a chance to breathe it is very good – after all these guys are no amateurs, they’re top musicians. But this happens far too infrequently and the album suffers as a consequence.

For the record, eight tracks in total and things get off to a really promising start with ‘Martello Morning’, an almost classic progressive rock track replete with soaring guitar solo and a myriad of time signature changes.

From here on though things go downhill, the so-so ‘Wisdom And Menace’ is followed by the faintly insipid ‘Bloom’ where the crooned vocals make their presence felt and it continues in this vein to the album’s (ironically) instrumental coda ‘Yes’.

A great shame this as Poor Genetic Material are known as one of the top progressive rock bands in Europe but, hey, even the greatest of bands have an off day now and again and this is theirs.

They’ll be back.

**1/2

Review by Alan Jones

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