| Artist: | Compilation |
| Title: | The River Of Constant Change |
| Label: | Mellow Records MMP 270 |
| Length(s): | 75+70 minutes |
| Year(s) of release: | 1995 |
| Month of review: | 02/1996 |
| 1) | Algebra - Dusk | 6.37 |
| 2) | Decode - Can-Utility And The Coastliners | 5.34 |
| 3) | Notturno Concertante - The Carpet Crawlers (V) | 6.27 |
| 4) | Moongarden - Living Forever | 4.47 |
| 5) | Lincoln Veronese - Time Table (vocals) | 5.20 |
| 6) | Queen Of Maybe - Blood On The Rooftops | 5.19 |
| 7) | Art And Illusion - Lillywhite Lilith (V) | 3.41 |
| 8) | Finistere - Harlequin (V) | 3.09 |
| 9) | T.M.A. - Ravine | 3.51 |
| 10) | Legend - The Day The Lights Went Out | 5.32 |
| 11) | Nostalgia - Am I Very Wrong?/A Place To Call My Own (V) | 4.48 |
| 12) | Men Of Lake - Twilight Alehouse (V) | 5.20 |
| 13) | Germinale - The Knife (V) | 7.26 |
| 14) | The Ancient Veil - The Lamia | 7.16 |
Disc 2:
| 1) | Max Micheletto - Horizons | 1.56 |
| 2) | Graziano Romani - Looking For Someone | 4.29 |
| 3) | Dracma - The Light Dies Down On Broadway | 4.41 |
| 4) | Submarine Silence - Entangled (instrumental) | 6.38 |
| 5) | Seconds Out - Watcher Of The Skies (live) | 7.52 |
| 6) | Mysia - Hairless Heart | 5.26 |
| 7) | Mirage - Dancing With The Moonlit Knight | 7.56 |
| 8) | Evolution - White Mountain | 7.07 |
| 9) | Final Conflict - No Son Of Mine | 7.30 |
| 10) | Irrgarten - In The Rapids (V) | 3.11 |
| 11) | Paul Ward - Wot Gorilla? | 3.23 |
| 12) | Unicorn - Afterglow | 4.22 |
| 13) | Galahad - The Chamber Of 32 Doors | 5.19 |
(V) = also on VDGG tribute
The sixth track is the first to show a little emotion. It's very good. The sevent is remarakbly alike the Genesis version, and eight unfortunately misses some the charm that Genesis put into it. Now it lacks something and is a little uneventful. Nine is a hard one. Ravine is not a track as such, bit more some collection of sounds. Hard to tell what is what and which is which. They have changed it quite a bit it seems.
10 is even harder because I'm not familiar with the original actually. It sounds alright, and usually I'm not that fond of Legend.
The eleventh track is a merged version of the tracks named, with the second within the first. The vocals are again accented, but to my surprise I rather liked the tracks.
Twilight Alehouse is quite a rocker and while I'm not familiar with the original (B-side to Watcher of the Skies, I think) it sounds unlike Genesis. Very rocky.
The last two tracks are both quite good, with the first having some Firth of Fifth interjected and the second some interesting parts on violin and pan flute
Few, that's half of it. Now to the second disc which starts with Horizons being fast paced after a slow start. The guy singing on the second track has a raunchy voice sounding a bit like Fornaciari. It sure helps the track along. Three is a very good track by Genesis, but this versions has vocals that are too easy and accented.
On four a violin is put to good use and it really gets better along the way, which is surprising, because this version is instrumental and without the humourous lyrics one would expect a inadvertent lullabye. Five is a, live, carbon copy of the original, if it weren't for the weaker vocals.
Six is a good one, with piano replacing the acoustic guitar in the first part and a more powerful/bombastic build up in the rest. It's also quite long, being extended with some meandering guitars at the end.
Seven is hard to cover I think, if you can't sing like Gabriel. The singing goes rather well, actually but it lacks the knack and the tempo of the original.
Very true to the Genesis atmosphere, the disturbing part of this track is the drumcomputer (but hey this guy is on his own). I must admit that the track turned out well, and the singer, Ken Senior, certainly doesn't sound as he looks. One would have expected a lower voice.
The commercially viable No son of Mine is done rather well by Final Conflict (not surprisingly I would say), although the harmonies leave something to be desired. Good climax.
After 10 being rather average, 11 sounds quite like the original (no vocals) but it has been lared with parts of Eleventh Earl of Mar and ...in that quiet earth.
While the last track is true to the original, except for the different vocals, naturally, the penultimate one is at once subdued and emotional.
The artwork is quite good, with two booklets one for each CD. The year of release of the original of every song has been noted, but not where the original can be found (in some cases, the originals are hard to come by). A lot of drawings of magicians and the Lamia can be found on the CDs and the booklet and the CD has a carton cover for the excess of artwork. Well done package. Also noted are all musicians and a discography and photograph of all of them.
In general the vocals could be better and with that I do not mean: more like Gabriel, because this is also a test to see whether the characteristic vocals are so important to a band. No, I mean the accented English here, although not often disturbing is very much present. I also noticed this with CDs by Italian bands, that are sung in English, making me wish they'd choose Italian instead and if they want people to know what they are singing about they could include a translation of the contents, but Italian is a wonderful language to sing in and should not be disregarded like this.
Anyway, the covers in general are average to good, although only very few times the songs really shine. A lot of rearrangements have taken place and some of the bands have taken the freedom to interject some of their own melodies or mixing the Genesis tracks into a new one.
A number of better tracks are 2, 6, 13, 14 from disc 1 and 2, 6, 11 from the second one.
As a last remark, they might have included where the originals can be found.