" The Guardian's Office" is a side project of Fruitcake's drummer/composer Pal Slovik. The band offers up a slightly '70's sounding progressive rock which has brief flirtations with hard rock of the same era. The music is, on the whole, very formulaic; with the tracks all ranging between 4:39 and 7:35. What we're fed here is a very vanilla, straight forward progressive rock which tends to meander. The continuous barrage of deep bass pedals to accentuate/ punctuate each track creates an over dramatic effect which becomes tiresome in a hurry. Add to this already pungent mix a lyrical outpouring which is grammatically incorrect, thus mostly incoherent ; and you get the recipe for a very bland record. The disc's saving grace is guitarist Morten Erikson. His 'Rotheryian' guitar fills create a tragic aura over the melodramatic keyboard passages delivered by Tony Hanssen. However, there are very few, if any, truly great musical moments on this disc.
The band just plays it way too safe on this record, creating a predictable musical mish-mash which gets tiresome in a hurry. This disc could have definitely benefited from at least one longer track where the musicians would have been allowed ( nay encouraged) to break out of the tight mold shrouding what could potentially be some very gifted players.
Yet another notch on Cyclops Records' bedpost of mediocrity.
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