Review: Lalu – The Fish Who Wanted to Be King

Style: Progressive Rock, Progressive Metal (clean vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Ayreon, Star One, Threshold
Review by: Doug
Country: France
Release date: 20 October, 2023

“Cheesy” always feels like a term intentionally designed to create conflict. Calling out the cases where artistry’s ambition exceeds its means, such a descriptor renders discussion impossible, as it only has meaning relative to some other (usually nebulous) thing that the critic finds sufficiently humble in its execution. All that being said, it’s hard to find a better word for the breathless, intensely eager tone prevalent throughout Lalu’s latest album, so sure: this album is very cheesy, earnest and sincere in a way that doesn’t fit the gravitas (or lack thereof) in the final product. The band members bring a lot of vibrant, infectious positive energy to their performance, but struggle to back it up with high-quality composition to help reinforce those feelings in the audience. So join me, my fromagers of the underground, for this grand banquet of all varieties of cheese!

The Fish Who Wanted To Be King’s aesthetic-defining opener “Forever Digital” features all of Ayreon’s overindulgence without the metal opera aspects which actually make that project enjoyable to listen to. Consider these core elements: singer Damian Wilson (Star One, ex-Threshold, among others) belts out vocals with effulgent enthusiasm. Percussion and piano backing rhythms hammer unnecessarily, indeed distractingly hard on the ones and threes. Guitar and keyboard melodies warble aimlessly in and out, providing a little spice whenever Wilson needs a break. This is Lalu’s defining sound, the proverbial curtain of Oz which obscures other activities from view behind its hanging folds; but while in this case I would prefer to direct my attention to the further layers beneath, it’s hard to pick them out with how the opaque, overwrought foreground shroud hides them from view.

“I never make the same album twice, let alone the same song twice,” says founder and keyboardist Vivien Lalu in press commentary for the album – but I have bad news. Despite individual moments that distinguish themselves, the songs collectively run together, each presenting much the same emotional mood. Moreover, although the band’s commentary implies the existence of a complex, meaningful story, it’s difficult to follow or to recall individual moments to mark the passage of the track listing. Bogged down even further by clunky lyricism that makes Rebecca Black sound like Shakespeare, such as in “Is That A London Number” (“Ring ring, you’ll find me in the phonebook / Ring ring, now you’ve got my number”), The Fish also couples that uninspired writing with extreme repetition. The ad nauseam “keep it together” refrain that recurs throughout “Deoxyribonucleic Acid” haunts my dreams, and it’s not helped by the keyboard solo around the three-minute mark, of a creaminess that would make even Jordan Rudess blush. The overall feeling calls to mind the stage musicals my parents’ generation believed to be the pinnacle of entertainment media, projecting the belief that if the ensemble merely performs with enough force of will, the audience will be crushed under the music’s emotional weight and inevitably concede the artist’s unmatched brilliance. In both cases, however, the presentation is liable to fall flat when it lacks a proper emotional payoff to back it up, relying instead solely on brute-forcing the audience’s expectations.

Much like an actual banquet, the musical feast spread offers a wide array of qualities. A scattering of small, appealing dishes peer up from Lalu’s cluttered table – some plucky acoustic guitar here, a hefty bass line there, and down at the far end of the long table a mold-cultured cheese wedge that you can smell even from twenty feet away, but you wish you could try a bite of anyway. However, even the all-instrumental “A Reversal Of Fortunes,” which shines a spotlight directly on all these more successful elements, can’t entirely reverse Lalu’s fortunes despite the welcome change of pace and lyrical reprieve. Even with full focus on the guitar and keyboard parts, the end result is merely good, demonstrating mainly competence and not the kind of technical mastery or impeccable composition that would be needed to shine out from beneath the vocal penumbra.

I can’t deny the overall quality of the instrumental elements here, let down as they are by the lyrical writing; The Fish Who Wanted To Be King displays hefty ambition and very real talent, but ultimately also a trite execution that clouds evaluation of all the rest. In the end, though, there’s also little to be found here that hasn’t either been largely left behind by the prog community or been done better by Arjen Anthony Lucassen in one of his countless projects. If you’ve been lying in bed feeling the absence of cheese in the world and daring the universe to bring it back – first of all, how could you do this to me, but secondly, maybe this one will actually be for you. If, on the other hand, you’re not prepared for that level of dairy intake, I doubt you will find much enjoyment with Lalu.

Recommended tracks: Just go devour a wheel of gorgonzola instead. Or maybe A Reversal of Fortune.
You may also like: Headspace, Shadow Gallery, Wensleydale, Stilton
Final verdict: 4/10

Related links: Spotify | YouTube | Facebook | Instagram | Metal-Archives page
Label: Frontiers Records s.r.l. – Website | Facebook

Lalu is:
– Damian Wilson (vocals)
– Joop Wolters (guitars, bass)
– Vivien Lalu (keyboards)
– Jelly Cardarelli (drums)
– Matt Daniel (keyboards)