MÉMOIRES... LIVE (E)

The French prog metal outfit Manigance deserves our honest and critical attention. Some excellent musicians and Didier Delsaux, a fine vocalist, provide us with twelve solid tracks, an intro and a good but short drum solo. Superb battles between the guitarists Francois Merle and Bruno Ramos and keyboardist Florent Taillander, catchy melodies and an almost perfect sound quality. A tremendous amount of energy comes from this six-piece band, who all ready produced the mini album Signe De Vie in 1997 and in this millennium three full-length albums, one of them being an extended re-issue from that first mini album. Most of the tracks have been written by Delsaux and Merle. Although predominantly consisting of up-tempo music - subtile but unmistakenly double bass drums - there are lots of orchestral interludes and many beautiful instrumental pieces to be found. Delsaux’s way of singing resembles the voice of Fabio Lione (Rhapsody) somewhat but its tremolo is a bit faster. Mark Boals (Royal Hunt, Ring Of Fire a.o) has got a similar voice. However, the driving force comes from bass player Marc Duffau and drummer Daniel Pouylau, both of them doing a great job. References could be (early) Dream Theater, Symphony X, Artension and Vanden Plas. The lyrics are sung in French but somehow this doesn’t disturb me. I will certainly go look for the other albums by Manigance and I suggest all prog metal fans do the same!