Seconds Before Landing
YOU TUBE: https://www.youtube.com/user/secondsbeforelanding
Seconds Before Landing is the brainchild of musician John Crispino. In the year 2010, Crispino began writing music for a progressive rock concept album, that was finished and released to critical acclaim in 2012. That album was titled The Great Deception, and it produced not only a hit song, but also a video that has been viewed by hundreds of thousands worldwide, with excerpts being used by news organizations from around the world. That track is titled “Welcome, To The Future”, and features King Crimsons’ Trey Gunn. Also appearing on that album, was legendary bass player, Tim Bogert from Jeff Beck fame. Now That I Have Your Attention is the new album, and this time, Crispino has added guitarist, Eric Maldonado to the mix, and the results are amazing.
With the one, two punch of Maldonado and Schuffert, along with Maurice Witkowski, Jamie Peck, JD Garrison. Mastered by two-time Grammy nominee Andy Jackson (Pink Floyd/David Gilmour). And while I want to jump straight on the Gilmour bandwagon here, I have-to say the album sounds more like the works of Roger Waters without even getting that far into it. But of-course that’s only a small observation, but worth mentioning nevertheless. Being a prog album it plays as a concept in which most of the titles speak for themselves as they refer to the concept. And as individual tracks it’s useless to try and pin point any song ideas without attaching them to the concept, which is essentially about UFO’s and alien lifeforms. It involves plenty of spoken word, music and singing around some spacey numbers that intertwine from beginning to end, starting with the “Intro” which reveals talk of an alien spacecraft landing. The second track is called “4 A.M.” and it deals with an invasion being talked about by dispatchers around some earie soundscapes. The track comes to life in almost the exact same way Pink Floyd The Wall does. In-fact it resembles it so much it almost sounds like a tribute to Roger Waters himself. It takes nothing away from the quality of music and concept, but you really get the feeling you’ve heard it before, concerning the musical passages. The rest, some might footage have even been used from well-known sources. And that’s just getting the influence factor out of the way before the track has time to pull off some absolutely-incendiary guitar work. It comes to life in a big way before a piano takes it out in style. The third track is “You’re Giving Me A Headache” which drags on a bit with the sound effects before a bouncy rocker takes over, and it’s the type of rocker you can dance to. But the vocals remind once again of Waters, although the music ironically sounds like something off the About Face album by David Gilmour in the 80s. And it’s nothing to sound like your heroes anymore, no matter if the heroes themselves are involved. But make no mistake these are all excellent pro players.
The tracks play on with my favorite being “Come Back To Me” with its mellow grooves to get away from the concept of it all, which it does on occasion and what I enjoy most about it, the musical moments of this good sophomore release.
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Jeff Turner