Band:	Zombi
Album:	Spirit Animal
Style:	Progressive rock
Release date:	February 2009

01. Spirit Animal
02. Spirt Warrior
03. Earthly Powers
04. Cosmic Powers
05. Through Time

The new Vangelis album Spirit Animal is a great achievement in moody, somewhat spacey progressive rock of the variety that plays like the score to a film that has not in fact been made. Uh, whoooops... I meant Zombi, of course, not Vangelis. My Freudian slip can be forgiven though, since Spirit Animal really does sound like a lost Vangelis film score.

Zombi finally add guitars to their sound, as if to justify reviewing the album on a metal website besides being released by Relapse. The guitar is nevertheless never overpowering and generally simply adds some more human emotion to the band's primarily synth-driven sound. Furthermore, the more riff-based compositions also add structure to Zombi's style, making these pieces more tight and concise - still ambient as hell but with a clear direction. It also sounds really quite excellent, recalling not only Vangelis but also Goblin, Rush, Tangerine Dream and Porcupine Tree. Forget about these musical traits though - by far the greatest draw towards Spirit Animal is actually its immensely epic cinematic scope. Indeed, this album made my daily journey from work back home into a bona fide odyssey and I caught myself moving in slow motion on a few occasions, or glancing at my reflection in store windows. All of a sudden, the bums I usually avoid like the plague on the streets of Warsaw became broken androids and I felt like hunting them down and decapitating them. Sure, it made me look like a complete moron to any onlookers but who cares? For a brief moment I was a blade runner.

Spirit Animal might not be a terribly original concept and it is certainly not music that you can listen to every day. Nevertheless, no matter how mundane and boring what you are doing might actually be, this album will make it seem like a science fiction epic and there is nothing quite like this sensation. Dario Argento, George A. Romero and John Carpenter, take notice: Zombi should score your next flick.