VA - The Spaghetti Epic 3 - The Great Silence (2008)

Ever since I discovered the great Colossus releases I follow them and look if there's anything new under the sun. And here we have found one: Spaghetti Epic no.3, The Great Silence. Somehow I'm still missing out on no.2 but no.1 was intriguing enough so I decided to go for this new release. Three epics are on this release.
Little tragedies is a new kid on the block from Russia and boy are these guys making a name for themselves! Fierce and super fast keyboards is their trademark, that's obvious after hearing this track. And what about great melody and tremendous compositional talent? This is truly an amazing track that completely blew me away from first till last minute. At times it reminds me of Covenant but this is much more catchy. Masterpiece track for me! 5 stars.

Yesterdays is from Hungary and I never heard of them either. But also these great musicians are highly impressive. Some original synthesizersounds in the first minute followed by very nice organ set the tone here. This epic is far more varied than the first one, more like most Colossus epics I heard in the past. But from a new band hearing such high quality stuff is a delicious surprise of course. Bull's eye contracting by Colossus I call this. Taking a risk and get rewarded for it, that's how I like it. 4,75*.

N.O.T. is an Italian progressive band and in most cases I'm not to keen on those. But every now and then there is a nice exception coming by and this is one of them. If I have to compare them to one of the two other epics it's absolutely the second. Also this huge effort by N.O.T. is very variegated. I like the part from 3:00 till 7:00 which is a tremendous instrumental effort with great build up. But also after this passage the quality remains very high. One of the best Italian efforts in Colossus history for sure, at least for my taste. 4,75*.

Looking at the ratings for each epic there's no escaping for the full score here. Am I exaggerating if I do that ? I really don't think so. I know just about all the Colossus releases and there were also a few 3 star and a four star rating amongst them. My huge love for epics doesn't blind me, on the contrary: I'm very critical in my judgement with the long songs. But I can't think of any reason to give this less than 5 stars. Extremely recommended for all proggers and especially the Colossusfans and epicfreaks