Garden Wall is one of the most overlooked, yet insanely powerful progressive metal bands around. It is a shame their albums are no longer available, but if you try hard you might find some of their CDs that were released on Mellow Records. The name Garden Wall comes from a pre-Genesis band in which Peter Gabriel and Tony Banks played in during their school years. Rumor has it that they had only one gig with this name though. Since the frontman of Garden Wall, Alessandro Servalle, is a big Genesis fan and considers them one of his biggest influences he chose this name.
Garden Wall is led by vocalist, guitarist, keyboardist, composer, lyricist Alessandro Seravelle, who, without a shadow of doubt, is one of the most innovative, creative, and expressive artists of the present day. The level of complexity on this album can easily be compared to the most complex bands of the 70's as well as modern bands such as Spiral Architect, Zero Hour, Cynic, Watchtower, and Death. The lyrics are quite profound with a touch of surrealism.
Chimica, the title of the bands fourth album, is an Italian word and it means "chemistry". The reason why this album is titled Chimica is Seravelle wanted to show the chemical side of man. It's not that he thinks man is only chemistry; on the contrary, he's being terribly ironic actually. Sometimes people forget they're mortal, they forget that something inside them, through chemical reactions, leads them where they don't want to go. Their internal chemical clock works and works, and there is no way to fight against it. People are in some kind of chemical prison. The opening song "Chemotaxis", with a running time of over 34 minutes, is a perfect documentary that catalogs the process in people's immune system which discovers bacteria and viruses and attaches to them. Life is a battle between organic, and therefore chemical, shapes.
Musically the song is full of interesting structures and key changes too. It is simply mindblowing what they have done. There are some motifs running through the entire composition, some of them are pretty easy to hear, other less so. When I spoke with Alessandro Seravelle a while back, he revealed to me that the atonal sections at the beginning of each suite in "Chemotaxis" and at the very end of it were constructed taking the band members names plus the words "Garden" and "Wall". What they did is convert the letters into notes along the fretboard on the guitar. Seravelle, however, doesn't play it on a chromatic scale. It's a very original idea to say the least, and this song alone makes this album worth seeking out.
Track Listing
1. Chemotaxis
2. Dave In The Swimming-Pool
3. La Belle Dame
4. Immer Unterwegs
5. Psychic Infrared
6. Immune (he knows my strength...)
7. No More
Total Time: 66:50
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