Powerful and at once tremendously melodical, both athmospherical and full of driving dynamics, cleverly devised and still one hundred per cent handmade – ARILYN are all this and even more.
Since their foundation in 2000, the four guys from the Palatinate region in Germany have always considered alleged opposites as challenges that are to be playfully mastered. After their debut album “Tomorrow Never Comes” – which in 2002 had instantly stirred sensation even beyond their home country – and the critically acclaimed follow-up “Virtual Reality” (2005), the art rockers from Ludwigshafen released their third opus “Alter Ego” in 2007. Once more they did justice to ARILYN’s characteristic blending of styles that keeps resisting any vapid pigeonholing. Anew, ARILYN invited listeners to a trip through a cosmos of highly melodic progressive rock where heavy, blues and other musical influences every now and then set new and unsuspected directions. Like a well-oiled machine, the band headed for diverse musical outposts once again – carried along by a magical carpet made of sometimes epically dense, sometimes playfully experimental keyboard sounds (Jürgen Mossgraber), fuelled by energetic guitar play (Jürgen Kaletta) as well as driving percussion work (Christof Doll) and decisively steered by singer and bass player Christian Külbs’ both characteristic and variable voice.
Just like the two earlier releases, “Alter Ego” once more proved that on their musical journey, ARILYN don’t even stop at their own inner self. With their reflective, yearning as well as emotionally charged lyrics and varying power and speed, the band navigates its way through mind’s smaller and bigger shallows, before taking the listener once again to new magnificent flights at high musical altitude – with a blend of unbridled rock power and atmospheric complexity that might at best be compared to bands like “Porcupine Tree”.
Even in prog motherland England, the four musicians from Ludwigshafen are no strangers anymore: Invited by “Classic Rock Society”, they have already given a number of cheerfully acclaimed performances – for instance as support act of "IQ" and "Spock’s Beard". As a thank you to their numerous fans in Britain, they presented their first DVD "Live in England" in the course of an England tour in October.