There's enough good musicianship and ideas to bring you back for repeated listens.

Sometimes a band’s name doesn’t always give you an indication of what kind of music they play but the Italian based band ‘Profusion’ do what it says on the tin. It’s progressive rock that fuses a number of different genres together, some of which you don’t hear too often from a prog metal band.

Luca Latini’s vocals are clear and almost pop like and there are some hummable melodies. Thomas laguzzi’s guitars are heavy with some serious crunch but it’s Gionatan Caradonna’s keyboards that help define the band’s sound. Caradonna’s keyboards have a quirky sound as if they were created in a lab by a science boffin. As a result, they share an eccentricity that reminds me of Swedish melodic prog band A.C.T.

The album and the band really heat up when they start fusing genres you might not expect. ‘Treasure Island’ takes a pirate song and rocks it up, coming across like a demented Jack Sparrow. ‘So Close But Alone’ really shows invention; it’s a tango flavoured tune based around a piano and acoustic guitar and is one of the standout tracks. ‘Tkeshi’ and ‘Chuta Chani’ add ethnic colours to their music. The pop rock melodies that Latini sings makes it all accessible regardless of the genre they mix in with the prog.

It might not be a heavyweight contender but there’s some real promise here and as an album it works well as the diversity doesn’t dilute their identity, it defines it and there’s enough good musicianship and ideas to bring you back for repeated listens.

Duncan Jamieson