Band:	Eureka
Album:	Shackleton's Voyage
Style:	Progressive metal
Website:	http://www.eureka-music.de/
Release date:	2009
A review by:	Jeff

01. The Last Adventure
02. Departure
03. The Challenge
04. Grytviken Whaling Station
05. Heading South
06. Icebound
07. Plenty Of Time
08. The Turning Point
09. Going Home
10. Into The Lifeboats
11. Elephant Island
12. Will You Ever Return?
13. In Search Of Relief
14. The Rescue
15. We Had Seen God!

Frank Bossert is a multi-instrumentalist from Germany but he is also the leader of Eureka, his progressive Rock combo. His fourth album, called "Shackleton's Voyage", talks about Sir Schackelton's expedition which occurred at the beginning of the 20th century. This man wanted to cross the whole Antarctica, it probably was one of the last real scientific expedition ever realized on Earth? And this is also a perfect story for a concept album, especially for something progressive and atmospheric?

If you like Yes or even Vangelis and Mike Oldfield, this album will be for you. The majority of "Shackleton's Voyage" is instrumental and only three songs of the release have lyrics. Despite this important point, the story works pretty well, and after the spoken introduction (by the British actor Ian Dickinson) you'll easily enter into Eureka music and follow the adventures of the scientific without any problem. Frank Bossert is a good compositor and he doesn't need to write a lot of lyrics (which are just here to do some kind of introduction and break in the story) to tell a story. This is impressive, his peaceful Progressive Rock with a lot of atmospheric passages and even some folk ones (with Pipes and whistle) is beautiful as hell. Oki, this is really calm and slow in general but "Shackleton's Voyage" is perfect for an evening at home, this is an album which deserves to be listened with a good audio system in a peaceful place.

Talking about sound quality, "Shackleton's Voyage" is obviously perfectly recorded. All the instruments are audible. You'll just have to like Neo Prog instruments and 80's keyboards but if you're not allergic to this really specific sound, everything should be ok for you. All in all "Shackleton's Voyage" is a lovely album, something "cute" but interesting too musically speaking. On the other hand, this is maybe quite elitist and only some few fans of Prog Rock will really enjoy it and won't be bored. But well have a look at it anyway just to see that music can "speak" (yes!).

Eureka is maybe not "Metal" but its intimist music will touch some of you. This is just great to follow this adventure though this music, as I said already it just works and you'll understand everything from the beginning to the end. Recommended to the fans of Neo Prog Rock at first but if you like movie sound-track, I'm sure that you'll like "Shackleton's Voyage". Don't miss it you think that you're one of the people mentioned above?