Asia are one of my favourite bands in that spectrum, though I would have to disagree with whoever said (think it was US) that the debut was better than the first two. I listened to the two hits on that and after that thought it fell sharply in quality. As a matter of fact, the last few tracks are really filler material. "Alpha", on the other hand, showed a much better understanding of what was wanted: a few love songs, some lengthy keyboard passages (have you listened to Downes on "The heat goes on"?) and some hard(ish) rockers. "Astra" sort of followed the same lines ("Rock and roll dreams" is a great song) but again tailed off towards the end.
I personally feel their "comeback", from "Aqua" through to about "Silent nation" (not inclusive) is their best period. The albums during that time (for those who want/need to/don't know, that's Aqua, Aria, Arena, Aura, and of course the two Archiva sets) are some of their best, and it's perhaps telling that once they dropped the "begin-and-end-in-A" idea --- how they kept that going so long is a mystery to me --- the quality began to fall. I personally think that although SN is a decent album it's just that: decent, not great, and I could always rely on an Asia album just to find its way into my collection on release, as I was never disappointed with any of them. "Phoenix" went a huge way to redressing the balance, and though I've only really listened to "Omega" once, I like what I hear. Can't wait for the new one!
For those who have an insatiable need to know, I don't like ELP so won't be commenting on the "other" topic in this thread...
