Band: Jaugernaut (A.D.)
Band Website: www.myspace.com/jaugernautad.com
Label: ProgRock Records
Label Website:www.progrockrecords.com
Release Date: 2008
For those of you keeping track, this is actually the third release from the band Jaugernaut,
but the first two were on vinyl back in the early eighties. It’s a long story but this West Coast band was just starting to get noticed
when they broke up. It wasn’t until the late nineties that original member Jim Johnston recognized there was still interest in the
band and decided to get things going again. Updating the band’s musical style to fit the new millennium he released Contra-Mantra in
2005 which is just now getting widespread release through ProgRock Records. Johnson (vocals, guitars, bass, drums, keyboards) enlisted
the support of Tyler Johnson (keyboards, programming), Jim Brammer (lead guitar) and Marty Prue (lead guitar) to bring his music to
fruition. What we have on Contra-Mantra is the first of a two-part concept about the origins of evil.
Contra-Mantra features
seven tracks running a total of about 55-minutes that musically is in the classic pomp-rock style with much that will appeal to fans
of not only that genre, but classic hard-edged progressive rock as well. Most of the songs are on the longish side and each goes through
some rather interesting twists and turns. Take for example the opening track “Anthem” (12:33) which starts with some haunting atmospherics
and fairground organ, before going up-tempo scratching for a few seconds, only to launch into classic crescendo laden AOR rock. At
3:18 into the song it changes yet again into a slow haunting acoustic guitar section with keyboard atmospherics where the vocals come
into play. At the 10-minute mark the track shifts into high-gear and goes up-tempo to close out the composition. Many of the tracks
are linked with some interesting loops and electronic programming providing some nice transitions. A few of the tracks like “The Damage
is Done” (4:59) sound like they’re lifted right out of the eighties only sonically updated to deliver a better punch. The musicianship
on Contra-Mantra is top-notch and the tunes are brimming with wonderful hard-edged melodies and anthemic harmonies but this is by
no means a prog-metal styled release, there is far too much musical variety for that to be the case. In fact the music is much like
a collage with many of the tracks being made up of small musical sections that form a beginning or an end section, so that one seven-minute
track actually sounds like two or three shorter tracks, but distinctly different if you know what I mean. Given that this is a concept
CD you’d expect there to be recurring themes and in fact there are a few. Take for example the acoustic refrain in “The Hard Way”
(14:51) of the opening tracks main theme.
If you enjoy the music of the bands such as