Portugal's TRAGIC COMIC welcome us to their premiere show, since this is their debut. ...And what an ambitious one, I might say, as the band felt confident enough to aim at constructing a conceptual piece, a 10-song cycle morphed by 9 short ambience setters into a rock opera, divided into two acts.

TRAGIC COMIC's music is full of easy-on-the-ear melodies and memorable choruses, made even more clean-cut-sounding by the AOR-tinged, neatly combined vocal styles of their two lead singers, Ne and Diana. Their timbres are a match, and the duet parts of the songs come across as real highlights, even if the sonic smoothness of some of the cuts occasionally borders on Eurovision-like syrupy balladry (Please Don't Let Me Down, SR).

The keyboard-heavy ROYAL HUNT-ish sound mix does wonders to reinforce that ever-apparent sense of melodicism, as depicted in the addictive soft rocker Night Tale, but at the same time the muddy, mid-range-y and somewhat volumed down presence of the guitars deprives some of the tracks of a harder edge that would probably help their colorful, adventurous spirit to shine brighter and livelier (namely Dementia, or the folk-ish, energetic, accordion(?)-flourished opener Journey Into The Unknown).

The show is ultimately stolen by The Dream Keepers, an evocative, dark circus of a tune, complete with an out-of-the-blue, wacko use of a dance-club beat!
 
Lyrically, it could be argued that the experiment unfortunately falls under its own weighty scope. The album plays a lot better as a collection of catchy songs from an enthusiastic new band, than as a soundtrack to its own sketchy, half-baked plot. The hastily structured narrative of Sophia's descent into a mysterious world of true love possibly created by her own subconscious is awkwardly followed through lines as subtle as but here I am holding my knees / with you in my head or don't get me wrong / you're all that I have / feels like you're gone / I miss you in bed. The in-between-the-tracks explanatory texts are in no less need of some serious editing. There is a lesson here to be learned, unconditional love is not possible in any realm, loneliness invaded them both, it is a difficult task to keep a listener emotionally engaged in your storytelling once you opt to force-feed him/her with this stuff.

All in all, fans of AOR influenced theatrical heavy rock in the vein of SHADOW GALLERY's eponymous album will probably find themselves really enjoying this release's well-written and creatively orchestrated music.

Those who demand concept albums where real emphasis has been placed on tight, carefully and economically balanced storytelling, will possibly have to compromise that if they choose to proceed.