Modrigue Symphonic PINK FLOYD?

As the last album featuring ELOY's "golden" line-up, "Silent Cries And Mighty Echoes" marks the end of an era. After the success of "Ocean", this new opus was their best selling record. Musically, the style is the same as on the previous opus, however a little more space-rock and science-fiction oriented. Catchy melodies, variations, rhythm changes, spacey guitar soli, synthesizer layers, hypnotic bass... Everything you're looking for is present. The only small problem is that the band was accused of plagiarism. The compositions exhibit clear inspirations from their British elder brothers, PINK FLOYD. So, rip-off or not rip-off?

"Astral Entrance" certainly resembles the famous "Shine On You Crazy Diamond Part 1" ambient opening with its synth-textures and Gilmour-ish guitar. It may have been first time this introduction was ripped-off, but clearly not the last in the progressive world. However, "Master Of Sensation" is different. This catchy song is an immediate boarding for space travel adventure, with varying rhythms and cool Bornemann soli. It really rocks! The 15 minutes "The Apocalypse" epic is the highlight of the record. A cosmic odyssey, alternating aerial and oppressive atmospheres.Driven by synthesizers and bass, this piece contains two PINK FLOYD references. The first one is the female singing passage in the style of "The Great Gig in the Sky". The second one is the pulsating bass line of the ending part, similar to the bass loop on "Echoes Part 2", however with a heavy guitar riff finale. Needless to say these two tracks are amongst ELOY's bests.

That's it for the FLOYD's borrowings.

We continue our interstellar journey with the energetic "Pilot To Paradise", a dynamic song carried by a nice synthesizer melody with some symphonic incursions. The two last tracks are much more ambient and slower. "De Labore Solis" is the weakest track of the record, as it is a little repetitive and does not contain many changes. On the contrary, "Mighty Echoes" offers much more variety and possesses a mystical ambiance. It features a pretty glockenspiel melody, a cool bass line and a spacey finale.

The remastered edition features 2 bonus tracks. If "Child Migration" (different from the track of the same name in "Colours") has replaced "De Labore Solis", this album could have reached the maximal note. This song is one of ELOY's catchiest and rock-iest! "Let the Sun Rise in my Brain" is more anecdotal.

So, plagiarism or not? "Wish You Were Here"'s little brother? I wouldn't say so. First, the borrowings are only present on some parts of the first two tracks. Second, and the most important, ELOY uses their floydian inspirations to develop a different music with its own style and personality: a mixture of fantasy, symphonic and sci-fi progressive rock.

Whether "Ocean" or "Silent Cries And Mighty Echoes" is the best ELOY's album is just a matter of taste. If we really want to sum up, the blue one is more symphonic, while the green one is more space-rock oriented. As you prefer. Personally, even after numerous listens over years, I still can't decide. Anyway, although arriving 4 years too late and sounding a bit dated, this opus is certainly one of the best progressive surprise of the year 1979. An essential record for space-rock and PINK FLOYD lovers!

Unfortunately, ELOY's future albums will never reach this quality again...

Warthur The Pink Floyd influence on Astral Entrance doesn't really bother me because there was always a strong Floyd influence in Eloy's work; by my reckoning, Silent Cries and Mighty Echoes is a more than worthy followup to Ocean. Frank Bornemann's vocals are my main problem with the album - accent aside, he just isn't a very good singer, so the extensive amounts of narration on some songs prevent this one from hitting five stars by my reckoning. Still, at least he makes up for it with some tasty guitar solos worthy of David Gilmour himself. Recommended to all fans of Eloy's brand of space rock.

aglasshouse Succeeding the release of Ocean (1977), the band Eloy was reveling in the success of the creative work. Knowing this, they raced to release their follow-up album. Thus, another space-rock album was born: Silent Cries and Mighty Echoes was released in the year of 1979, two years after the release of Ocean. Fan response was true and hearty, but critical reception was much more dulled than on the release of the previous album. "The album is good," people would say. "but it borrows too many elements from Pink Floyd, especially the 1975 smash hit Wish You Were Here." Is this really true? I mean, I've already reviewed Ocean and told my thoughts on it. My main point that I made in the review was how they, even though taking elements from the Floyd, were able to develop their own sound and ideas, and make gold in the aftermath. I am regretful to say that isn't on this release. Sure, I can tell they tried hard to make a great release in the wake of both Dawn (1976) and Ocean, but it didn't live nearly up to those two album's standards. You may even call it a face-plant in the step to making this a good release. Although I wouldn't go as far as to say such a thing, this album is indeed not as good as it's successors. Right off the bat, 'Astral Entrance / Master of Sensation' reminds me of a little ditty called 'Shine On You Crazy Diamond'. Though I'm not a fan of the song, doubtless you (the reader) have heard it. Even with the harmonious synth opening and all, this song uses a LOT of material from WYWH. The song's synth header fades into a funky-jazz beat which extremely reminds me of something you'd hear off of PF's Meddle (1971). Enough of comparing it to Floyd, what has Eloy done correctly to make it their own? Well I suppose that Bornemann's usual heavy accent gives the song it's personal flare, as well as having some very cool synthesizer effects throughout. I can give the song credit (and the album) to be a good casual listen. 'The Apocalypse' is actually a nice comeback from the opener, with some awesome choral effects and some nice drumming from Matziol. There is some very soul-like singing that sounds good in the overall affect, and I might go so far as to say that this song beats 'The Great Gig in the Sky' from Dark Side of the Moon. The song ends on a really cool wavering guitar flow. Pretty nice. 'Mighty Echoes' is probably my last real pick on the album with some nice crashing synthesizer and some jazzy bass lines. Very reminiscent of Animals. As you might have seen, I keep comparing these songs to Pink Floyd material. And that brings me to my big problem with this album. It borrows way too much from them, especially their mainstream hit albums. I wouldn't mind as much if I hadn't already listened to PF's entire discography. I don't really want to hear them all over again except not being them.

Therefore, my final judging for this album is a 2.5, because I cannot deny that this album has talented musicians playing greatly. But I don't think this album is really essential to Eloy fans in general, or even space-rock fans. if you're looking for some good space rock material by Eloy, check out Ocean or Dawn. This release is something you can probably miss.

(Review written for ProgArchives on 2014-12-22)