A CHALLENGE OF HONOUR

"No Way Out"

Vrihaspati Recordings - 2008

CD

After bayonets and barbed wire, it's now time for statues and temples to remind us of the ancient Hellas. We could start from here, from the cult of martial statues so dear to 20th Century's totalitarianisms to outline A Challenge Of Honour's new work, but it's not at all the case. With "No Way Out", released after almost four years of silence, the Dutch band surprises us from the very first notes by moving out of the martial / neofolk etiquette. This album presents no martial rhythms at all, it's not marching against the enemy, no storm of steel is stunning our ears, on the contrary, we are led by light and melancholic, sometimes even classical-like sounds, with a vein of Romanticism smelling of Autumn. Above all for A Challenge Of Honour there's the feeling of a reality made of pain and anguish, as seen through the lesson of a dark-wave distant in time, more intimate than declamatory.

Maybe someone would consider this release as an involution, but on the opposite I think that Peter Savelkoul managed to get new vital nourishment from his own past. While listening to "No Way Out", "Slavery Called Democracy", "Nakba", "Walls Of Jericho" and "Fall From Grace", you can feel the ability to build simple but effective melodies, able to bring to the light a distant world still well present in our memory. As a matter of fact, maybe the best way to listen to "No Way Out" is to drive your car towards the evening, or, more easily, to start walking along the boulevards of a park at sunset, when the heart is full of longing towards infinity and we feel like being everywhere and nowhere at the same time.

- Marco S.

Website: http://www.a-challenge-of-honour.net

Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/achallengeofhonour

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