Hearing this self-released EP takes me back in time to the early Nineties, when I seemed to be sent quite a lot of this type of material. Of course we were in the heady throes of neo-prog at that time (although the mass music press of course refused to say that prog existed in any form whatsoever), and there were plenty of new bands coming out showing what they could do. Bands such as IQ and Pendragon had already been around for more than ten years, and the new guard were trying to break through, and anywhere you looked there was another band with a tape they were using to self-promote so that they could get gigs and more fans. Of course, some of those bands are still here today (Big Big Train are virtually unrecognizable from that first tape) and now we have a new ‘new guard’.
Investinmolden are a Polish band who although formed in May 2009 didn’t play their first gig until some four years later, also releasing this demo in the same year. The name was taken from a sketch by Monty Python's Flying Circus, which includes the phrase “invest in Malden”, but a simple typo when registering the name has given them a slightly different version and a story that the Pythons would surely enjoy. At the time of recording the demo they didn’t have a drummer so all drums are programmed, but now they now have a settled line-up of Michał Ambrożkiewicz (bass), Krzysztof Deskur (guitars), Mateusz Pawlukiewicz (drums) and Kacper Wojaczek (vocals, keyboards). This is all about a band at the very start of their progressive journey, and while the vocals may not always be as clean and as in key as they might be, and there is some clunky moves between the keyboards and guitars, overall this shows great promise and certainly stands up extremely well with the demos I have heard in the past. They have a dual language website at www.investinmolden.cba.pl and is worth visiting. From there you can get to their Bandcamp site, and I encourage you to give these guys a chance as while they are at the very beginning of their journey, I can see them doing some interesting things in the future.
