Seagall-Hidden Ego

recordJet
2013

Around 10 years ago Seagall first saw the light of day and took flight. This Moscow-based 4-piece was originally brought to life to be a solo undertaking for highly touted guitarist Elena Seaglova, but that all changed with the addition of a group of similarly talented musicians. Elena, who (per the promo bio) is the winner of multiple guitar festivals and is an international endorser of Siggi Braun guitars and ENGL amplifiers, has manged to make Seagall into a rather jazzy (or should that be snazzy?) instrumental group. Good instrumental rock is not the easiest thing in the world to pull off as the lack of vocals can and, frankly speaking here, often do, expose flaws in the actually music. Little things that might otherwise be missed are magnified under the bright spotlight and exposed for all to see by attentive listeners. Of course that's just the first potential pitfall to be had for these sorts of groups. Just take a sneak peak at the other side of the coin where we might very well find music, when stripped down into vocal-free recordings, that fails to hold the listeners attention for long. When "Hidden Ego" is held up to the light of the day by a discerning public it just might be that some of this blurs together even when we're talking about highly creative compositions.  at first listen it might appear that Seagall isn't that concerned about listener interaction, but a repeated listen or two might be in order with "Hidden Ego". Two times through for me and I was happy enough with the direction this group, which is filled out by guitarist Alexander Sinitsyn, bassist Dmitry Shtatnov and drummer Ilya Lipatov were heading. If you find yourself in the market for a cut and dry "who do they sound like" I'm afraid this review will be of little help. Peppered with the familiar sounds of their home country, which works on several different layers, our friends in Seagall cover straight-up rock, hard rock and yes, even heavy metal. Most of the material present on "Hidden Ego" has a distinct classic rock vibe and when this group starts to pick up steam their helped out greatly by going for tried and true heavy metal riffs. As this might just be Seagall's first recording to see an "official" release outside of Russia it has just the right amount of highlights to make people stop and take notice. Find out more about this instrumental 4-piece at their Facebook page below.



https://www.facebook.com/SeagallBand