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Released by Musea in May, 2013
Marco Bernard
I reviewed The Samurai of Prog's previous album Undercover (2011), certainly my favourite covers Prog albums of the last few years so I was very excited when Secrets of Disguise came out.
One difference between the two CDs, is that on this one original compositions occupy a much larger part of the album. Still, more than two thirds of it consists of covers and again, we get very good reinterpretations of quite a few classic Prog Rock pieces. These songs remain faithfull to the originals, but are also creatively done so that they offer the listeners a different enough experience justifying the purchase of this CD. For me, highlights are "Three Piece Suite" (England), Dancing with the Moonlit Knight (Genesis), Aspirations (Gentle Giant) and Darkness (Van Der Graaf Generator) but all the other covers are quite good.
As for the original material, well once again David Myers (ex Musical Box) writes and performs a great piano intro to the Genesis track featured ("Before the Dance"). He had written "Before The Lamia" on the previous CD (It would be nice if he could put out a collection of these pre-Genesis piano pieces someday). The other original tracks are couple of long and somewhat quirky (and very British sounding) pieces, certainly not out of place on this excellent CD.
Like for the previous album, a large pallette of very talented musicians are featured on Secrets of Disguise and they offer great performances. Also, Secrets of Disguise is an album with a killer good sound (unlike some recent covers albums featuring superstars of Prog).
For lovers of the great era of Progressive Rock, this album is very highly recommended indeed.
