Trollheart

Album title: Critical Mass
Artist: Threshold
Nationality: English
Year: 2002
Chronology: 6

Track Listing: Phenomenon/Choices/Falling Away/Fragmentation/Echoes of Life/Round and Round/Avalon/Critical Mass (i) Fission (ii) Fusion (iii) Lucky

Comments: Back to the Mac, as it were - this album comes squarely in the middle of Threshold’s discography, and is one of the six on which the late Andrew “Mac” MacDermott takes the vocals. It kicks off very powerfully with “Phenomenon”, a hard rock puncher with a sweet hook in the chorus. It’s also another album on which, if only for one line, they use a vocoder or at least some sort of phased vocal. Like the previous album it runs on the guitar work of Karl Groom and Nickl Midson, with a nice slow section in the middle, which, in typical Threshold fashion, forms a bridge to bring the whole thing up a whole gear and into a great soaring chorus leading to a screeching guitar solo.

“Choices” keeps up the pressure, again pretty guitar driven, and while Mac is a different singer to Damian Wilson, he’s not that different that you’re jarred if you listen to one of his albums after one of Wilson’s. It’s not, in other words, a Fish/Steve Hogarth or even John Wetton/John Payne kind of feeling. To some degree, I at least can often forget which vocalist is on which album, and have to check. That’s not a criticism of either man, just shows that Threshold obviously see keeping a sense of some sort of consistency in their vocalists important. One of my favourite tracks on the album, “Falling Away” could possibly be considered a ballad, though it has a lot of balls to it, some very powerful guitar, and gives us the first chance we have to hear Mac tone it down, which he does so well, soft and soulful before he lets it loose for the middle eighth and chorus.

Those hooks are there again; it’s impossible not to sing this long after the last note has faded away, and a rather lovely and evocative solo from Groom does that no harm at all. “Fragmentation” sounds to me like something that might have been left off the sessions for the Clone album; a great song but it sounds like it would have fit in well with the 1998 offering. This is where Richard West begins to make his mark on the music with some fine arpeggios. It’s still pretty much built around the guitar riffs though. More slightly phased vocals and a fist-punching semi-chorus that must go down well live. Lovely little piano intro to “Echoes of Life”, which does a good job of fooling you into thinking it’s a ballad. It’s not, as Groom, West and Midson will quickly show you, the track picking up speed and intensity as it goes, and launching triumphantly into one of those memorable choruses they’re so good at.

Some particularly good drumming on this; I know I usually don’t give drummers credit - not because I don’t like them or rate them but because it’s hard for me to tell a good drummer from a bad one - but here I really see the influence of the percussion driving the melody along. Echoes (sorry) too of Yes in the stop/start guitar, then the drums roll grandly and introduce a truly beautiful piano and guitar duet which just makes the song, Groom (or Midson) really making their guitar sound like a violin at times. “Round and Round” explores the idea of reincarnation, with a mixture of soft introspective guitar parts and harder riffs, but I have to admit it’s my least favourite track on the album. I wouldn’t call it bad, as no track here is, but it comes across as the weakest on this opus.

The penultimate track is another of my favourites, this time a proper ballad, and “Avalon” has the kind of stirring, emotional vocal that perhaps only Damian Wilson could do justice to as well as Mac does. It’s a West vehicle, carried on his soft piano lines and almost orchestral synths; the hard guitar power chords here seem almost needless really, but they do give the song teeth it would otherwise lack. Still, I’d have preferred a more restrained contribution from Groom. He does throw in a very emotional solo though, so there is that. And that takes us to the closer, and it’s also the epic. And the title track.

Split into three parts, “Critical Mass” opens on “Fission”, with an almost “Run to You” riff running through it before Groom really lets loose and the song flies off at metal speed, West’s fingers flying over the keys in a flurry of activity as the two pair up. There’s another perfectly melodious chorus, again some very impressive drumming, then part two, “Fusion”, involves basically a lengthy instrumental, which allows Karl Groom to channel his inner Gilmour and the final part is a jaunty little acoustic-accompanied piece to bring the whole thing to a somewhat low-key close. I could have wished for a better ending, but that’s a small niggle, and not worth dwelling upon.



Track(s) I liked: everything other than “Round and Round”

Track(s) I didn't like: “Round and Round”

One standout: “Avalon”

One rotten apple: n/a

Overall impression: Another almost perfect Threshold album. Not my favourite, but up there among them. A real example of a prog metal band really flexing themselves creatively and coming up with the goods almost effortlessly.

Rating: 9.7/10

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