Trolls' reasons for not liking an album before he's even heard it:

1. It has cover songs
2. It has too few songs
3. tbd

:laughing:

Not 'getting' Close to the Edge means you don't get to title any threads as "Prog" - imo.

What's next? The Fortress of Punk where you admit to not liking 'Never Mind the Bollocks'?

(just joshing with ya Trolls!)

You just wait till you see the Fortess of Jazz! No Davis, Coltrane or Ellington! :laughing:

In fact. no jazz :D

My favourite kind. :)

I have to really be in a very particular mood, and it's rare, but every now and then a spin through 'Kind of Blue' is ridiculously satisfying in a very earthy way.


The better the quality of the recording and playback system..... well, the better.

Back to Prog

Have you mentioned Starcastle yet? Holy bejeebus, their first 2 albums should have had warning stickers on them:

"Sounds exactly like Yes, but without any of the creativity."

It sounds like music specifically made for a Yes documentary because the producers couldn't get the rights to use the real songs.

Perfect!


One of my fave Yes covers.

I'll admit to liking a little jazz, among them being KOB. As for Starcastle, I try to stay away from them as even the mention of their name increases my sugar intake. Should have been drowned at birth. Yuck.

What's really funny is how many in my circle bought that first album and really dug it for a while - myself included.

Yes' last album was Relayer in 1974 and the rumors were the band was done. When Starcastle landed in 76 a lot of us were hard up for anything new and Yes-ish.

Any port in a storm.

Didn't take long for most of us to realize it was all frosting and no cake. Thankfully Yes re-surfaced shortly after with Going for the One.

I mean it's not like Yes fans were left empty handed during the band's hiatus, Squire and Anderson both put out fantastic solo albums during that period.

Howe and Wakeman too. Those albums weren't well received when they were released. It took some years for them to grow on folks. Honestly, I remember being disappointed with them (especially with Howe's).

His was all over the place and highlighted his less than stellar songwriting and.... ahem, mediocre vocals.
Wakeman and Anderson's were more composed but ridiculously self indulgent and nowhere near a Yes fix.
Only Fish out of Water did pretty well right away but really only based on the opening track.

I still listen to Fish and Olias but haven't heard the other two in forever.

Olias of Sunhillow is definitely not for everyone, it's very new agey and yes it's a bit silly but it's beautifully crafted, there's none of the instrumental flashiness of a Yes record, it's just pure vibes.

Fish Out of Water is closer to sounding like a Yes album, the presence of Bruford and Moraz certainly helps with that, though you've also got other instruments in the mix like flute and sax. The songs are not quite Yes quality but Squire's bass playing is in top form and more than enough reason to give it a listen.

I'm a huge fan of Wakeman's solo stuff from that period, especially Journey to the Center of the Earth. I personally love the over the top bombast of it all, but I definitely get why it would tip the scale into cheese for some.

Bombast? Whatever do you mean? :rofl:


https://i.imgur.com/PiuPOSw.jpg

And that's only for the acoustic numbers! :laughing:

Last time we looked into the Five Decades of Prog was nearly two years ago now, and we had come around again to the 1980s, which means we continue, finally, after a very long pause indeed, with an album from the 1990s. Let’s not go for something obvious though. How about this?

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...ust_We_Are.jpg
Album title: Stardust We Are
Artist: The Flower Kings
Nationality: Swedish
Year: 1997
Chronology: 3
The Trollheart Factor: 1

Track Listing: In the Eyes of the World/A Room with a View/Just this Once/Church of Your Heart/Poor Mr. Rain’s Ordinary Guitar/The Man Who Walked with Kings/Circus Brimstone/Crying Clown/Compassion/Pipes of Peace/The End of Innocence/Merrygoround/Don of the Universe/A Day at the Mall/Different People/Kingdom of Lies/If 28/Ghost of the Red Cloud/Hotel Nirvana/Stardust We Are
Comments: I know very little about this band, though they are supposed to be quite famous and popular. I enjoyed one album by their lead guitarist Roine Stoit, and I think I may have heard something like The King Biscuit Hour? Hmm. No. Doesn’t exist. Must have dreamed that one. Anyway, I read that in fact the band were formed to support Stolt on the tour for his solo album I referred to, his third, called, wait for it, The Flower King, and then took on a life of their own. With Stolt or without him? Let’s see: with. Okay.

On the face of it, this looks pretty daunting. Not only is it a double album, topping out at well over an hour and ten minutes, not only has it ten - count ‘em! Ten! - instrumentals, which in fact makes half the album instrumental, but it also has a closing track running to 25 minutes! This will either be a joy or an ordeal, guess we’ll find out which soon enough. Pretty spacey, ambient opening as “In the Eyes of the World” gets us going then kicks up into a big dramatic and bouncy keyboard run, part of the riff of Genesis’s “Duke’s Travels” in there lads! Powerful percussion, good guitar, there’s a lot crammed into this opening track, though then again it is ten minutes long. And not even close to being the longest on this double album, as already mentioned. Good start though, gets quite catchy as it goes along.

Nice little instrumental (only nine to go!) and we’re into “Just This Once”, a sort of staggered uptempo with again I have to say a very Genesis keyboard arpeggio running through it (“Fountain of Salmacis”? Yeah, “Fountain of Salmacis”) with an ominous dark kind of atmosphere about it. It’s good but I wonder if the album is going to suffer from too many long tracks? I mean, that’s almost eight minutes, then the next one is nine, though “Church of Your Heart” seems like it might be a ballad, and is quite nice. Some lovely introspective guitar work here. Can see lighters waving in the crowd for this at live performances. Nice sort of Church organ (not that surprisingly, given the title) Toccata going on too. The vocal is good but to be fair nothing terribly special. Something that sounds like a Christmas carol in there too. Hmm.

Into the first of four instrumentals, one after the other, with the tender “Poor Mr. Rain’s Ordinary Guitar” followed by “The Man Who Walked with Kings”, with again I feel a very Genesis sound to it, stronger and mostly driven on keys and harder guitar, the third being a carnival opening into a bloody twelve-minute instrumental (!) called “Circus Brimstone”, which gets all kind of dark and doomy and scary pretty quickly. Could be good. And it is, but I really struggle to keep my attention on an instrumental track that runs for so long, and there’s another one coming. I’m not sure this layout is a good idea. Now there’s some sort of backward masking going on, which I personally think is just silly. At least “Crying Clown” is less than a minute long and just a sort of coda to “Circus Brimstone”, bit Waits-y to be honest. “Compassion” then ends the first disc, with an odd kind of Waters-style echoing vocal against a dark ominous beat, and to be honest it’s the first one that’s grabbed my attention since the opener. It’s also not too long, about five minutes with some sort of hidden track - yes, another fucking instrumental, you guessed it - near the end.

On to disc two we go, and we’re back with the church organ blasting its way into what is now our sixth instrumental (seventh if you count the hidden track), “Pipes of Peace”, thankfully again a very short one, just over a minute, and then another epic, eight minutes plus of “End of the Innocence” - these guys just do not do short tracks, do they? This one is not bad, got a sort of lounge feel to it in ways, with some jazzy piano and some almost cinematic synth. “Merrygoround” continues the kind of circus theme of the last part of the first disc, and it’s very peppy and upbeat with fine keys and piano, but again I cannot get away from those Genesis comparisons: I just keep hearing riffs from Duke and Nursery Cryme everywhere. And another instrumental in “Don of the Universe”, another long one at over seven minutes. I do like it, but damn it’s hard to keep listening to all these instrumentals. And there are three more to go. This one seems to use a Floyd riff off I think The Wall. Nice usage of what sounds like birdsong, and then sitar is cool.

The next instrumental is very short, just over a minute and basically just some electric piano or organ noodling, leading us into “Different People”, with sounds of traffic and then an upbeat synth line with some acoustic guitar and quite a catchy hook. It’s a bit hippy-dippy but not bad, and then “Kingdom of Lies” is a much rockier effort, with again the Duke sound very much to the fore. It quickly breaks down into a sort of blues beat though, swaggering along with all but a sense of Bob Seger to it, quite different I must say. “If 28”, the penultimate instrumental (how can I write such a line? But so it is) is a lovely slow stately piano piece with an edge of sombre mourning about it, then “Ghost of the Red Cloud” has more than a touch of reggae about it, it’s decent enough but kind of meh in other ways, before the final instrumental “Hotel Nirvana” takes us to the closer, the epic 25-minute title track.

Now the opening of “Stardust We Are” bears a very close resemblance to “Forever Morning” from Tony Banks’ solo album A Curious Feeling, which for me just reinforces the idea that this band, or at least their keysman, is influenced by the Genesis legend. Not surprisingly with a track running for a quarter of an hour, it opens on a long instrumental, nearly four minutes before any vocals come in. I read that this has become The Flower Kings’ signature tune, so can only assume it’s seen as a sort of “2112”, “Supper’s Ready” or “Close to the Edge” among their fans. Only in prog, right? I mean, it sounds okay, and given a few more listens I might appreciate it more, but it takes a really special track to keep my interest straight for 25 minutes, and this ain’t it. Genesis knew how to do it. VDGG knew how to do it. Sometimes. Rush knew how to do it. Arena know how to do it. To me, Yes do not know how to do it, nor do IQ or Spock’s Beard, and the Flower Kings definitely do not know how to do it. Attention just wandered till it was finally over. Not that I thought it was bad, but I couldn’t keep concentrating on it.

Track(s) I liked: Church of Your Heart, Poor Mr. Rain’s Ordinary Guitar, Compassion, If 28

Track(s) I didn't like: Nothing I didn’t actively dislike, just a lot that passed me by.

One standout: Not really no.

One rotten apple: Again, not really. This might have been due to the fact that the album failed to really hold my attention.

Overall impression: I think asking anyone other than a fan to sit through a dozen instrumentals, four of them in a row, one of them twelve minutes long, and then hit them right at the end with a 25-minute epic is too much to expect. I was not quite drained, but more frustrated by the end, and certainly relieved. If the album had been shorter, or had less instrumentals, maybe I might have enjoyed it more. Guess we’ll never know, but on the basis of this album I don’t see myself becoming a fan of these guys. Although a 90s album, I think this could be guilty of that accusation that was levelled at many of the larger prog bands at the end of the 70s, that of overblown, complacent self-indulgence, of being more concerned with how long they could make a song than what was in it, and of being bloated and irrelevant. Stardust We Are? More like Stardust Me Arse. Sorry.

Rating: 4.9/10

Future Plan: Probably avoid the Flower Kings, or else invest in some weedkiller.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhRQ-uI_0JU

Always nice to just feature one of the albums you've enjoyed personally, that may not fit into any category or work into any feature, but even so is nevertheless one of


(Incidentally, I know this will also be coming up in my Yes thread, but we've almost two decades to go, album-wise, before that, so why not? It's a great album in its own right).


https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...Howe_album.jpg

Album title: Anderson, Bruford, Wakeman, Howe
Artist: Anderson, Bruford, Wakeman, Howe
Nationality: English
Year: 1989
Chronology: 1 of 1
The Trollheart Factor: 10

Conceived as Jon Anderson's attempt to break out of the strictures he felt the recent Yes albums (90125, Big Generator) had placed on him, this was a project which involved former members of Yes coming together to record what was essentially a new Yes album done the “old Yes” way. You can tell by the names who were in the project - Rick Wakeman of course, legendary keysman on some of Yes's best albums, Steve Howe, who left to join Asia, and drumming icon Bill Bruford from King Crimson. Contractual and copyright problems prevented the new supergroup from using the name Yes, so after some brainstorming they decided the safest option was to just use their names. Makes for a long album title, but hey, like everyone else, we'll refer to them from now on as ABWH, okay?

I seem to recall I bought this album on the strength of the cover alone (though of course I knew the names of the performers, so knew what the music was likely to sound like) - who wouldn't, with that fantastic Roger Dean artwork, which certainly appealed to someone who was getting into the likes of Frank Frazetta and Boris Vallejo? I bought this on vinyl originally, and it was presented in a beautifully lavish gatefold sleeve. To be honest, I had never been a huge fan of Yes, but I had enjoyed the last two albums, and I liked Rick Wakeman's work. I was also familiar with Anderson's collaborations with another of my favourite artists of the time, the singularly talented Vangelis. So it wasn't a difficult sell as far as I was concerned.

But the needle tells all (sigh! Ask your parents, willya? MAN I feel old!), so what sort of music have we here? There's a deceptively gentle opening, tinkling piano as Wakeman introduces the first piece of music, and you feel yourself settling back. BAD idea! Within a few moments Bruford's drums come crashing through, the pace jumps to about third or fourth gear, and the first song is well into its stride. The clear, piercing voice of Jon Anderson dispels any initial belief that this may have been an instrumental. As it goes, ABWH is broken into four multi-part compositions, with some self-contained complete tracks complemeting these larger works, but all seems to feed into the one overall concept, and the album plays very much like one huge slice of music, almost an hour in length. The aforementioned piano intro is called “Sound”, and forms the first of a triplet of songs that make up the first composition, called “Themes”. As the drums kick in and the singing begins, we're into “Second Attention”, which goes on for about half the track. Really, it's a bit fatuous to call “Sound” a third of the track, as it's really nothing more than a piano intro, a few seconds long, not even a minute really, and the rest of “Themes” is divided between “Second Attention” (the larger part) and “Soul Warrior”, which is totally instrumental, and runs for just over a minute and a half.

The next track is a self-contained one, just over three minutes long. “Fist of Fire” is much slower, heavier and darker than the previous. There's a real sense of ominousness about this: stabbing keyboards, thumping drums and Anderson's urgent vocal carrying the track. ”Through the darkest age/ We could surely fly/ Through the darkest age/ With the fist of fire.” There are some great keyboard solos by the Wizard King here, good backing vocals too (multi-tracked?). This leads into the second multi-part composition, called “Brother of Mine”, on which Asia and ex-Yes keysman Geoff Downes lends a hand with the writing. The whole thing starts off with a gong sound and then a slow, soulful intro: ”So, giving all the love you have/ Never be afraid/ To show your heart.” It opens with “The Big Dream”, a jaunty romp which takes us up to “Nothing Can Come Between Us”, where the song speeds up a bit and the theme from “Brother of Mine” is repeated, as happens throughout the multi-parters. Nice guitar work here, before things really take off for the final part, “Long Lost Brother of Mine”, which brings the piece full circle.

The way the parts of the multi-compositional pieces meld and flow together effortlessly makes it somewhat difficult to note where one part ends and another begins, and there's definitely no gaps as the parts slide from one to another like tributaries of a river coming together. It's not a criticism, nor is it a problem when listening to the album, as the music is so uniformly brilliant that you really cease to care what one section is called, and just really listen to it as one continuous piece of wonderful music, four legends at the very pinnacle of their game, consummate professionals working not to outdo each other, but to come together in such a way as to almost become one single entity, dedicated to producing the very best music they can.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwFEQnVxfRk
After the multi-layered “Brother of Mine” there's a single track next, but no less brilliant in its way. “Birthright” has a dark, brooding tone, with a steady drumbeat, and chronicles the lasting effect on the Australian Aborigines of the nuclear tests carried out by Britain at Maralinga in the late fifties and early sixties: ”This place ain't big enough/ For stars and stripes/ This place ain't big enough/ For red and white.” About halfway through it morphs into something of an Irish jig, and gets a little faster as it approaches its conclusion. The song is really a vehicle for Steve Howe's guitar, and does he dazzle! It's followed by one of only two ballads on the album, the gently understated, almost hymnal “The Meeting”, where Anderson and Wakeman bring things down to a whisper with one of the nicest songs I've heard in a very long time. The gentle piano perfectly complements Jon Anderson's choir-boy voice, and yes, there is something spiritual about the song, even in the lyric: ”Surely I could tell/ If you asked me, Lord/ To board the train/ My life, my love/ Would be the same.” It closes the first side of the album in gentle triumph, almost a lullaby, fading slowly away but remaining in the ears long after the last chords have been played, and the last notes have receded into the night.

Side 2 kicks off with another multi-composition, under the banner heading of “Quartet”. Featuring, yes you guessed it, four parts, it starts off with “I Wanna Learn”, a boppy, joyful, almost childlike song about discovery and wonder, as Anderson cries ”I wanna know more about life/ And things that can fly in between my mind/ I wanna change all that I dream about/ My waking and my so many lives.”

It's relatively short, about two minutes, but then the whole track is just over nine, so with four sections about two per section is right. Second part is “She Gives Me Love”, keeping the happy theme going and essentially continuing on the same song. Anderson cheekily namechecks one of the old Yes songs as he sings ”Through the gates of delirium so fast...” Apparently there are other examples of this throughout the album, though not being a 70s-era fan of Yes I couldn't point them out for you. “She Gives Me Love” seamlessly becomes “Who Was the First”, which is almost exactly the same melody but with different lyrics, until the climax of the track is reached with “I'm Alive”, where the theme from “The Meeting” returns, to slow the track down and bring it to a gentle and very satisfying close.

“Teakbois”, the next self-contained track, I could in all honesty have done without. It's totally anachronistic, basically the song of a band forming behind a really annoying Calypso beat. It has its moments, but if there's a bad track on the album (and there really isn't), then this is it. Unfortunately it also runs for over seven minutes, close to but not equalling the three multi-parters so far, which is a pity, as the space could have been used for a much more appropriate song I think this was just basically a jam for the guys, a bit of fun. Not for me, though...

Luckily things are soon back on track for the final multi-composition, as “The Order of the Universe” takes the album towards its ending. Another nine-minute piece, it kicks off with a powerful dramatic instrumental which goes under the title of “Order Theme”, before the main part of the song, “Rock Gives Courage” blasts in, a real hard-rocker in the mould of (sorry guys, I know you don't want to relate to 90125 but...) “Owner of a Lonely Heart” or “Our Song”. Things speed up then for the third part, “It's So Hard to Grow”, reintroducing the central theme: ”You can't imagine it/ How hard it is to grow/ You can't imagine it/ Can you imagine/ The order of the universe?” The remaining part, called “The Universe” is basically an instrumental ending to the song, a retracing of the introduction.

As side 1 ended with a lovely little ballad, so does side 2, and indeed the album, come to a relaxing close, particularly after the histrionics of “The Order of the Universe”, with a beautiful little acoustic number, on which Anderson's old mate Vangelis lends a land with the composing. It's VERY Jon Anderson: ”Let us be together/ Let's pretend that we are free/ Let's all be where the angels find us/ We all have the key.” There's minimal or no percussion in the song, and it's just Steve Howe and Jon Anderson finishing the album off in fine style. ”Something that I feel/ To pour upon my soul/ Countenance of love/ For one and all”.

Amen, brother.

There never was another ABWH album. Two years later the two “sides” of Yes resolved their differences, and the result was Union, released under the Yes banner. Although some of its music is similar to ABWH, there are no multi-part pieces on it, and it's not a concept album, so although it is regarded in some circles as the 2nd ABWH album, to me it's a Yes album, pure and simple. An excellent one, it has to be said, but for all that, a Yes product and not a continuation of ABWH, although some songs on it were supposed to have found life on the projected follow up to ABWH. In this manner, I consider ABWH the album to be something of a rarity: unique in that it is at once an album by established members of a band, a new supergroup and a debut all in one, and is the only recorded example of this partnership (setting aside live recordings). For this reason alone it deserves to be listened to, and appreciated.

TRACK LISTING
1. Themes
i) Sound
ii) Second Attention
iii) Soul Warrior
2. Fist of Fire
3. Brother of Mine
i) The Big Dream
ii) Nothing Can Come Between Us
iii) Long Lost Brother of Mine
4. Birthright
5. The Meeting
6. Quartet
i) I Wanna Learn
ii) She Gives Me Love
iii) Who Was the First
iv) I'm Alive
7. Teakbois
8. The Order of the Universe
i) Order Theme
ii)Rock Gives Courage
iii) It's So Hard to Grow
iv) The Universe
9. Let's Pretend

LOVE The Flower Kings! Ever checked out the Prog supergroup he was in, Transatlantic?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transatlantic_(band)

Great stuff.

I've heard Transatlantic, but more for the fact that Trewavas is in it. Decent band, can't recall being entirely blown away. Sort of the same with Edison's Children.

I'm glad I made a bortposting reaction for exactly this type of post
https://i.imgur.com/dg86WrI.gif

But wait a minute. I'm confused.
https://i.pinimg.com/736x/21/b3/e4/2...1704cedabd.jpg

Why should I delete it??

https://i.postimg.cc/jjcQnkfr/thinker1.gif
Back to this again. Another band I just can’t get to grips with, even though apparently they’re supposed to be one of the biggest prog bands in Canada. I would imagine that position is reserved for Rush, and maybe Mystery might have a thing or two to say about it also, but from what I read and from general consumption of prog over the last four decades or so, Saga are very respected. Yet every time I hear a song from them I increasingly think “meh”. I get the impression more of a kind of mix of AOR and Pomp Rock from them, kind of the way I look at Styx, another band I know little of, beyond their hit singles. Maybe I’ve just been hearing the wrong random tracks on my playlist, but every time I see the name come up I roll my eyes, and I usually find it’s the correct reaction. However I’ve not yet heard a full album, so let’s rectify that now.
https://www.canadianclassicrock.com/...22-768x549.png
Current status:https://i.postimg.cc/SN8SrnGg/smallsad.jpg

Quick Bio: Formed in 1977 and released their first album to collective yawns, but have since gone on to sell over eight million albums and had chart hits, though I doubt anyone outside the progsphere would know them. I certainly don’t, and I’m in the progsphere! They also released some sort of mad concept thing called The Chapters, with the songs all mixed up for some reason.

Albums I have heard: None

I’m not at all familiar with the band, so I’ve looked through prog websites to find out what the albums are that are regarded as their best, and it seems to be these. As I'll usually be doing my best to go chronologically, we’ll start off with this one.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...t_twilight.jpg
Images at Twilight (1979)

This is their second album and when it kicks off I have to say I’m immediately put in mind of my old muckers, The Alan Parsons Project. Is that a good or bad thing? I guess we’ll see. The vocalist reminds me of one of the Arena singers, again is that a plus or a minus? It’s not of course necessary, and I don’t suggest it is, but I see no long tracks on this album. No suites, nothing over five or six minutes. Two of those Chapters things are on this, but I’m not really fussed about that. I’m sure Saga fans are aghast at my dismissal of what is seen as surely a very important part of the mythology and music of their band, but at this point all I want to do here is see if I can get into them. I’ll admit the opener is not at all bad, sort of has a Pendragon “Back in the Spotlight” feel about it, and yes, I’m quite aware this was nine years before Nick and Co. put their second album out. Just the impression it gives me. It’s a decent opening, no doubt, but then the APP influences persist through the second track, even more so in fact, very close to their “Pyramania”. Usage of the vocoder is interesting and the guitar work is good. However at the moment good is as good as it gets, if you understand. I haven’t heard anything that has really made me sit up and take notice, and nothing that has even come close to encouraging me to change my mind.

“Slow Motion”, I must admit, is very annoying and throwaway, a track that really doesn’t seem to go anywhere and hovers between new-wave and a sort of half-pomp sound; kind of reminds me of a faster China Crisis or something. Some nice thick keys coming in later help to solidify the sound of it, but I’d say it’s the one I like least, and I haven’t been impressed with anything yet. I feel the next one may be a ballad, but I’m wrong. “You’re Not Alone” starts off with biting guitar and then has a peppy keyboard line but again I find myself grinding my teeth. I don’t know what it is about these guys, they just seem to rub me up the wrong way. I’m not at all crazy about the singer either; I don’t feel he has the sort of voice that goes well with progressive rock. We’re back to a kind of early Pendragon feel here, and yes I know Saga were first, I’m just saying that that’s what it reminds me of.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05lyvwvFhG4
I see Wiki has them categorised as “progressive rock/new wave”, at least this album, and I’d agree with that: there’s definitely a sense of almost eighties pop from this and I think it waters down the prog elements, at least for me, and sort of confuses me. What is it I’m listening to? I’d say maybe the closest could be progressive pop, which I’m sure Saga fans will want to hang me by a certain piece of my anatomy for, but it’s what comes across to me. And not even a “harder” prog pop like It Bites: this just seems to be a fish out of water, not sure what it wants to be. I wonder as we go along will I come across a real progressive rock album from this band, or is this as, um, good as it gets? All I can say at this point is I’m glad this is a short album, with eight tracks, and I’m now halfway through it.

“Take it or Leave it” might be a good motto for me with this band, but we’ll give them a chance. I do find, even on this one album, the same sort of melodies, rhythms and arpeggios repeating through various tracks, which for me makes it very predictable. This one is catchy enough, to be fair, but again it’s nothing special. I read reviews of this album and I find myself asking are we listening to the same record? Maybe those people want something different from prog, but as the title of my Prog History thread says, I know what I like, and at the moment I really can’t say I like this much. I do however like the rippling piano that introduces “Images (Chapter One)” and the whistling keyboard melody that accompanies it. It’s the longest track, just over six and a half minutes, so it’s either going to be instrumental or a ballad I would think, and it’s the latter, as the vocal comes in.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIIHoW5dTXs
I’d certainly say it’s the standout on the album, but then, it doesn’t have very much competition. Perhaps though this is an example of the real Saga peeking through, an indication of what the band can do when they knuckle down seriously? On the other hand, it could be an aberration, something we’re not likely to hear again on subsequent albums. Whichever is the case, it’s certainly got my notice, so if the album maintains this kind of quality to the end it might not be a totally hopeless case for me. “Hot to Cold”, though, has a nice bouncy arpeggio opening it, but this I think is the main problem I have with Saga: everything seems to be uptempo, light, breezy and sort of whimsical. I don’t hear much in the way of, I don’t know, stately keyboard passages, acoustic guitar, violin, any particularly long instrumentals. I still say that if they weren’t tagged as such I would be very unlikely to consider this band any sort of progressive rock at all. Way too poppy for my tastes, at least on this album. And we close on “Mouse in a Maze”, with an interesting acapella vocal opening, driven then on hard guitar with quite a Brian May feel to it and yet again those APP themes all over the place. There’s a bit more about this track, a little more maturity perhaps, taking themselves a shade more seriously right at the end. At least it’s something. But is it too little too late? Yeah. Yeah, I think it is.

Track listing

1. It’s Time (Chapter Three)
2. See Them Smile
3. Slow Motion
4. You’re Not Alone
5. Take It or Leave It
6. Images (Chapter One)
7. Hot to Cold
8. Mouse in a Maze

At the end of this first album, I can’t say I’m any more impressed than I was before I began, which is not at all. Maybe things will change with the second and third album I sample, but so far this has only confirmed my belief that this is a band I’m unlikely to ever get into, or frankly, want to.

Has anything on this album impressed me at all? I can sort of dig “It’s Time”, I think “Mouse in a Maze” is a good closer and maybe, maybe a pointer to better things, and “Images” is a great ballad, so there could be hope. Maybe.

Result for this album: https://i.postimg.cc/SN8SrnGg/smallsad.jpg

Result so far: https://i.postimg.cc/SN8SrnGg/smallsad.jpg

If you like early Styx, you're gonna love this one. :D

I don't like to use the term "guilty pleasure" that much but if Mr. Roboto is not it I don't know what is.

Btw have you taken a good look at that design for Mr. Roboto? Because yikes. :eek:

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/i...xWffE&usqp=CAU

Looks like some bizarre mashup between Max Shreck and Daft Punk.

I know that one - crazy song but fun - and I know "Babe" (duh) and I think that's about it with Styx. I'll probably feature them here at some point too, whether it will be in this section or not I don't know, but I should check more of their stuff out.

Please Please Please do not review Mr. Roboto. There's already been way more than enough written about that gross miscalculation of a..... I was going to say album but that's too kind..... TRAINWRECK!

Think most fans would agree, The Grand Illusion is far and away their best work and more than worthy of an inclusion in this thread.

Your passionate plea has been noted, and will be discussed at the next board meeting. We will advise you of our decision in six to eight weeks. Thank you.
http://blog.lucidmeetings.com/hubfs/...rds-people.jpg

Styx are a guilty pleasure of mine, honestly. If nothing else they always had killer synth parts. For all his Broadway rock corniness, Dennis DeYoung had absolute taste in synths.

To me Styx were the ultimate jack of all trades master of none band of the 70s. Hard rock, prog rock, yacht rock, they did it all, and always with a hefty topping of cheese.

Well that and it's an absurdly racist Japanese caricature.

My old band use to do Suite Madam Blue, which nobody knew cause I don't think it was ever a radio hit or anything, but it would always go over amazingly well.

Absolute killer synth work on that track!

To me Styx were the ultimate jack of all trades master of none band of the 70s. Hard rock, prog rock, yacht rock, they did it all and always with a generous topping of cheese.

Todd in the Shadows once compared Dennis DeYoung's vocal style to that Dana Carvey "Choppin' Broccoli" song from SNL and now I can't unhear it.

Well that and it's an absurdly racist Japanese caricature like something straight out of a WW2 Warner Bros cartoon.

Looks like a villain from a Kabuki theater production.

https://ich.unesco.org/img/photo/thumb/00780-BIG.jpg

All right then, on to the second example I’m going to take. I’m reliably informed this is one of their best regarded, and it comes two years after the previous one. It also has the hit “Wind Him Up”, which I’ve heard of, but not heard, and two more of those Chapters things. Let’s see if this changes my mind, or reinforces it.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...lternative.jpg
Worlds Apart (1981)

I don’t want to judge an album by its cover, but my god it’s pretty awful. I had to check twice to see what it is: seems to be some sort of sorcerer or demonic guy holding a map while everything either explodes or steam covers everything. What’s the idea there I wonder? Do I wonder? Not really. Don’t care. It’s certainly a step down from the first album I looked at, in terms of covers. Very unattractive. Well, let’s see what the music is like.

Got a bit more of a punch to it as it begins, kind of a military beat to “On the Loose”, which was a hit, and I see it says Michael Sadler, the singer who annoyed me so much on the previous album, changed his vocal style at the urging of the producer. Much better. It’s very early, of course, but does this sound prog to me? At this particular moment, not really, but it has a certain charm. Not sure what makes it so much better than any of the previous Saga songs that it became a hit, but whatever. There is a more mature sense about it, so that’s something. Still using that APP main melody though. Hmm. “Wind Him Up” is next, and apparently this became a hit - mostly in Canada - due more or less to its heavy rotation on MTV. That can be a good or a bad thing: if the song became a hit because people liked the video the song itself may not be that good. Of course, it could also be that both are good. That stuttery riff runs through this track as well, though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mhNM4XqTN4
It’s decent, perhaps even better than decent. Is it changing my mind about Saga? The jury are still in the box, never mind retired to consider a verdict. Evidence is still being presented, Your Honour. “Wind Him Up” is another playful, boppy, uptempo song but again it froths rather than slays, for me anyway. I will admit that I was singing “Mouse in a Maze” this morning, so they’ve made some impression on me. That was the last album, of course. Can this one do something similar? Well, “Amnesia” is slower, and conjures up, of all things, images of 80s Genesis, around the time of the self-titled oh no it doesn’t, just went into another bippity-boppity rhythm which robs it of the sort of gravitas it was beginning to attain. Meh. And meh to the next one too. A common problem with bands like this, with me anyway, is that songs tend to blend together and I can never remember any of them after the album is over. This is not an issue with bands like Arena, Threshold, Marillion, Big Big Train and a hundred others. I take it as an indication that, to me at any rate, the band, and possibly the album(s) is or are not very interesting, at least not enough to keep my attention.

This one is called “Framed” and the only real thing I can tell you about it, other than being yet another uptempo pop/rocky thing is that there’s a very annoying voiceover about people being framed, and then a pretty decent guitar solo and instrumental part, which almost, but not quite, saves the song. Other than that, like a lot here, it’s more or less passed me by. “Time’s Up” isn’t bad, to be fair, but again it’s not going to remain in my head afterwards. “The Interview” has a return to that tougher, marching beat the opener had, and the arpeggios are good. I’d actually say it’s the first really good track on the album to date.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bYA6ZXjkow
Okay, “No Regrets”, the first (only?) ballad is pretty damn fine, and I’d say close to being the first song of theirs I would consider truly progressive rock in its style. I like that one a lot. Great ambient sounds, kind of tubular bells somewhere in there too, and the vocal really suits the music. So two good tracks one after the other: are they going for a big finish here? Let’s see. Oh, and that’s one of the Chapters things, if you care. Next up we have “Conversations”, which has a sort of confused speech thing at the beginning; not exactly ground-breaking but at least it fits in with the title. Good opening instrumental - or is it all instrumental? Again very much more prog rock here, perhaps Saga are beginning to come of age. I don’t know if this would be classed as an instrumental, but the only vocals on it are the - presumably taped - snatches of discussion and talking going on, so maybe.

The closer then finally gets a little closer to the kind of song length you might be expecting on a prog album, though at just seven minutes it’s not quite what you’d call an epic. Not that length of track equals quality, but just generally, when I’m looking at new albums that are - sometimes mistakenly or undeservingly - labelled as prog, I do often tend to check the track lengths. It’s not the only yardstick by which I measure prog, of course, but overall, in a general sense, you don’t find too many other genres with songs over ten minutes, apart from maybe Atmospheric Black Metal, Ambient and a few others. “No Stranger”, then, opens with some sort of dark chant going on, quite moody in its atmosphere, slowburner perhaps, and it’s another of those Chapters. It’s, well, it’s all right, but it goes through too many changes and certainly does not leave me singing it at the end like I was with the last album’s closer.

Track listing

On the Loose
Wind Him Up
Amnesia
Framed
Time’s Up
The Interview
No Regrets (Chapter Five)
Conversations
No Stranger (Chapter Eight)

I can see a little more promise in this one, at least on the second side, says he, showing his age. But I’m still not convinced. I had hoped for a big blockbuster ending, and what I got was a fairly half-decent but in the end limpwristed shrug. So it seems to me anyway. Still, there are a few good tracks here, but like they say, in the same way that a few good tracks don’t make a good album, one good album (which I’m not convinced this is) does not make a good band. And this being acknowledged as their best, most commercially successful and loved album, kind of makes it look to me as if there’s only one way to go from here, and that’s down.

You want me to say it, don't you? Go on, admit it. All right, I will. I'll say it.

At this point, it seems Saga and myself are still... worlds apart.
Bum-tish!

Has anything on this album impressed me at all? Oh yeah. Much more than the previous one. I liked “No Regrets” and “The Interview”, though “Framed” (despite the very decent instrumental section) and “Conversations” both annoyed me, and I was disappointed by the closer. Overall though, I'd say this is a more progressive rock album than the other one. A step in the right direction, but we've a long way to go yet.

Result for this album: https://i.postimg.cc/PfCrC3vs/smallneutral.jpg

Result so far: https://i.postimg.cc/SN8SrnGg/smallsad.jpg

And so Saga have one last chance to impress me. Is it likely? At the moment I would say I’m slightly less meh towards them, but not much. This, then, is the third album I’m taking, going on recommendations from their fanbase, and as it’s a good deal more recent than the first two, who knows what might happen?

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...e_of_cards.jpg

House of Cards (2001)

So we’re now twenty years ahead of Worlds Apart, and it’s interesting to me to note that this album did not chart, nor have any hit singles. Could it be better for that, or will it be a really poor effort? Still no long tracks, despite this having twelve, the most of the three I’ve looked at so far. The opener, “God Knows”, has a long-ish ambient sort of intro but then turns into another sort of uptempo boppy thing, though there is a harder edge to this, I will admit. The speech samples are quite annoying, and this is not the first time Saga have done this. I can’t say this excites me anyway. It’s not terrible but it’s still kind of meh, and really, I’ve always been a believer that you need a good track to kick an album off, and this isn’t it. Maybe it’ll get better. “The Runaway” has a sort of AOR feel to it, which has always been where I see Saga more positioned than as a prog band. It’s pretty guitar driven, and again it’s okay but not what I would call a breakout track. Sounds a little like something maybe Pat Benatar would have put out in the mid-eighties.

Could “Always There” be that breakout song? It’s certainly caught my attention, so that’s a start. Sort of a slow-ish acoustic guitar riff running through it, with a nice hook in the melody. I have to say, I like this one. Again though it has more an kind of maybe indie vibe rather than anything prog, but then Marillion have “After Me” and there are plenty of non-proglike songs in the catalogue of any prog band you care to name, so that’s not really a minus against them. I don’t think i’d call this a ballad, but it certainly is the slowest track so far. And, at the moment, far and away the best. “Ashes to Ashes” is a lot more proggy now, and I think I may also like this one. Got a sense of mid-era Arena about this, for sure. Another of the Chapters things. Good keyboard parts, with some ambient sounds in there too. It is a little repetitive though. Far better is “Once in a Lifetime”, a sort of waltzy semi-ballad that sounds like it could really have what it takes, as long as they don’t blow it as they tend to do so often.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CkmEb32jjE
No they didn’t try to overextend it or make it into something it wasn’t. That was very pleasant, and a good hook in it too. If they wrote more songs like that it’s possible Saga might impress me more, or at least induce me to look into their other albums (this is fourteen of twenty-two, so far), and in fact “Only Human”, rather surprisingly, continues the trend set down by “Once in a Lifetime” (there is another track, called, rather appropriately, “So Good, So Far”, but it’s not on my version, being only available on US and Japanese pressings). Another kind of semi-ballad with some nice soft percussion and picked guitar, it has a good sense of emotion in the vocal, and even an almost Rotheryesque guitar solo. Impressive.

And it more or less keeps going with “That’s How We Like It”, which ups the tempo but resists the urge to do their usual and stomp and bounce along, keeping well clear of the pop side of things, and again putting me in mind of Arena and maybe It Bites too. The chorus is perhaps a little cheesy, but I can probably forgive them that, seeing as, after a shaky start, this album is proving to be much more enjoyable than I had expected. The short piano instrumental is lovely, and then another uptempo but no less great song in “We’ll Meet Again” with some fine guitar work and a driving beat, and this is another of the Chapters. That leaves us with only two tracks, and to be fair, even if they’re shit - and at this point I don’t think they will be - this album is still a quantum leap forward for me in my attempt to get into Saga. Maybe the later albums are where it’s at.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFI-YlJZK8I
Okay well there’s a somewhat embarrassing semi-rap or chant at the opening of “Money Talks”, but once it gets going it’s a pretty damn fine song, even if it does tend a little too far into pop, even (shudder) boyband territory. The hook is enough to earn it forgiveness for that though, and I’m still engaged. We end then on a sort of descending piano line into a guitar riff and a strange laugh as we pile into the title track, with a sort of boogie blues tune which confuses me a little, and I would have to say it’s not the ending I would have hoped for. “Money Talks” would have been a much more satisfying closer, not to mention that they bring those speech samples back in and really I find the track quite a mess. It’s a poor final taste of this band, but I’m still happy enough with this album, head and shoulders above the other two I listened to.

Track listing

God Knows
The Runaway
Always There
Ashes to Ashes (Chapter 11)
Once in a Lifetime
Only Human
That’s How We Like It
Watching the Clock
We’ll Meet Again (Chapter 15)
Money Talks
House of Cards

So at the end of my little excursion through the music of Saga in three albums, have I changed my mind? Well, a little, to be honest, mostly based on this one. I still don’t see them as a band I would be too interested in pushing myself to like, and if, as I imagine is the case, it’s only the later albums - say, those in this century - that might appeal to me, well then there are another, what, eleven albums I’d have to listen to which I might not like. And it’s not worth that. Not to mention that, should I find I do like the post-2000 ones, there are only eight more of them to listen to. I can’t see that it’s worth my while, whichever way I look at it.

All I can say is that I’ve gained a smidgeon more respect for them as a band, but as a progressive rock band, I’m afraid that, a few tracks here and there apart, I really don’t see it. If I had an icon that was a partial smile, I’d use it, but I can’t say Saga have put a smile on my face yet. Still, it’s a better result that it was before I began, and I guess that’s something.

Result for this album: https://i.postimg.cc/ry3Pf57q/smallhappy.jpg

Result so far: https://i.postimg.cc/jqL16Mg8/smallneutral.jpg

Final result (for now) on Saga: https://i.postimg.cc/jqL16Mg8/smallneutral.jpg

Here's a new section where I'll look at a single track, whether it's one I've just
discovered, one I know well, a classic or one I consider to be criminally ignored, and I'll waffle on about it in my usual style. And the name I shall give this section shall be
https://i.postimg.cc/vZ4Q8dxC/Trollsongs1b.jpg
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...h_tinyfish.jpg
Title: “All Hands Lost”
Artist: Tinyfish
Nationality: English
Year: 2006
Album: Tinyfish
Running time: 12:26
Subject: Shipwreck? Not sure; no lyric sheet available

Tinyfish are a band about whom I know little, though they seem to have something a lot of prog bands do not, which is a sense of humour, calling themselves “the world’s smallest prog band”, despite there being five of them, making them larger in terms of personnel than many I can name. Not that I mean all prog artists take themselves too seriously, but undoubtedly some do, a carryover from the over-indulgences and complacency, and, let’s face it, arrogance of their forebears from the seventies. I have not heard this, Tinyfish’s debut album, released now over fifteen years ago, nor indeed any of their others; they remain as one of the many many bands I have yet to experience through the medium of the album, and wait patiently on my hard disk until I get the time or have the inclination to sample them, but this track came up on a playlist and I was, I have to admit, damned impressed.

It’s a long one, as you can see, and goes through many changes, opening on a sort of acoustic ringing slow guitar line, the vocal of Simon Godfrey very pleasing in a sort of Big Big Train/Spock’s Beard way, guitars handled by he and co-founder Jim Sanders, and Tinyfish appear to be somewhat different in that I can’t see any mention of keyboards. In a prog band? Unheard of? Not quite, but certainly very unusual. They do use guitar synths, so maybe that’s how they get around the keyboard parts, or maybe they don’t care. The guitars in the opening section do make enough of a melody on their own, so perhaps they’re not needed. A pretty fine guitar solo in the fourth minute accompanied by powerful percussion from Paul Worwood and a fluting sound that I guess comes from the guitar synths.

Building up now in the sixth minute on the back of a really long-held vocal note and then another breakaway solo, though a short one, the melody now reminding me of Twelfth Night as it picks up speed. Everything slows down then in the seventh minute for a - well, I would say keyboard or synth part but I guess it must be guitar synth - kind of effect that puts me in mind of Pallas’ “Queen of the Deep” and the melody becomes more low-key and slower with a sort of Mike Oldfield idea in the electric guitar. Now heading into the ninth minute on a reflective guitar solo and the last three minutes seem to run out instrumentally, with a somewhat disconcerting sudden stop and loud guitar riff then fading out.

I will admit, on second listen it’s not as great as I thought it was when I first heard it, but it’s still a pretty decent song and for the length of it, really doesn’t flag or lose my interest. The ending could be better but overall it’s a pointer to check out this largely ignored band and see what else they have in their locker.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58QoKfUUE94

Love the banner, you make it yourself?

I'm impressed by what you did with the title font there, how'd you do that?

No I don't create that well. I steal from others.
:shycouch:

The banner was used in my history of prog journal, and it can be found by simply typing "progressive rock" into Google. The font I had to search hard for. I wanted the Yes one, obviously, from their album covers but it was proving hard to track down (searching on a font site for "yes font" yields some interesting, but ultimately not usable, results). So in the end I found a forum where someone has a link to what is called "Classic Yes font", and that was the one I used. If you want the link I can pass it to you. Once I had it in Paint Shop the rest was simple, just a little tweaking to get the size right and I thought yellow was the best colour to use against the background.

It’s been over a year since I began this journey, and let’s be honest here, I didn’t get far. Mostly I think it was due to a flat battery, which left us drifting in space battling various nasties, most of whom thought we were food. But then again, what can you really expect when you buy your craft from Honest Urkel’s Used Space Vehicle Round-Up? I mean, in my defence, it seemed a bargain.No, I don’t think he was wearing a cowboy hat. Looked like a homburg to me. Oh, I see! The other head! Always forget to check. Oh well, live and learn.
https://www.swagonline.net/sites/def...3/Apr/1292.jpg
Anyway, now I’ve had to call out Infinity A and have lost a no-claims bonus larger than the GDP of a small galactic empire, we are at least now on the way again. Therefore I advise you to strap yourselves back in and relax as we bid farewell to assorted blue and green and red and yellow amorphous creatures and head back into the highways and byways of my record collection, to
https://i.postimg.cc/cH5wF4bz/progvoy.jpg
Like I say, we didn’t get very far last time, so let’s see where we did get to. A.C.T. was our, well, first and at that point only stop. So what’s after that? Well, now, what’s this black and gold thing coming up in front of us?
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...Gold_cover.png
Oh right: ABBA Gold. Well, everyone loves ABBA, but no way are they prog. What about Abraham Music Project? Can’t say I’ve ever heard of them. Let’s check them out. Well, I see Lee Abraham; we’ll be checking him out later. Has this anything to do with him? It would appear not. What else can I find out about the artist? Well apparently the prevalent wisdom is that yes, this is prog, at least partially. So let’s give it a spin, shall we? And can I once again ask you all to remain in your seats? We do not want to lose any more of y … not that we did lose any of you … that memory-supressant is still working I hope? Good, good. So stay inside: there’s nothing out there but blackness and cold, colder and blacker than a Florida Republican’s heart, and it’s warm in here. There’s also beer. And music. What kind of music? Let’s find out.



https://i.scdn.co/image/ab67616d0000...999b4f37a219d6
Artist: Abraham
Nationality: American
Sub-genre:
Formed: 2019
Number of albums: 1
Owned by me: 1
Listened to: 0
Album selected: Abraham Music Project, 2019
Position in discography: 1

Comments: Seems this guy is one of those who either couldn’t afford a second name, or thinks it’s more cool and mysterious to just use the one. Anyway the only information I can dig up on him is that he worked with other bands before striking out on his own, is a composer and multi-instrumentalist, and has some vague connection to Supertramp. Right. Tagline is “First the honesty, then the promise”. Well, it’s better than “first the money, then the music” isn’t it? Anyway, according to the esteemed Prog Magazine, “Aor marries prog rockin fine fashion”. Sounds lovely. Nice sweet guitar opening and for some reason I thought “Horizon” would be an instrumental. Must have been thinking of Genesis. Good singer, if it’s him, sort of a sense of Alan Parsons about the music with a touch of maybe Pendragon in there too. Sort of a semi-ballad with a lot of crooning and some vocoder work too; a very good start.

There’s very much a sense of ELO on “Mr. Mastermind”, impressive vocal harmonies, though whether they’re all him or not I can’t tell you as there is very little information on this guy. Discogs don’t got it, Wiki shrugs and even the mighty ProgArchive looks embarrassed never to have heard of him. His own website gives the track listing but that’s about it. No actual details other than a lot of faff about how great he is, which to be honest after two tracks I find myself agreeing to. I will say this though: he notes many of the artists he has “worked with” - whether that’s writing, composing, playing or producing I don’t know, it’s all a little vague - including Paul McCartney, Santana and, as already mentioned, Supertramp, there’s no clarification as to what he did with who, and I kind of find myself wondering if he was a session musician or something?

Well, whatever, he certainly knows his way around a song, and I’ve no complaints so far. “Here I Am” is a much more uptempo, almost country style of song with a large slice of AOR and not the smallest pinch of pop. I’m not so sure about this one to be honest. Yeah this one is just silly, with its kind of African chant and I keep expecting ****ing Black Lace to dance in any moment and start singing about pushing pineapples and shaking trees. Bollocks. There’s also not much in the song. It’s a pass on this one. “One Day at a Time” gets things back on track with a stately guitar intro and some fine piano, the first ballad I would say. There’s a very epic, dramatic feel to this, its grandeur making “Here I Am” more silly by the minute, but luckily it’s easy to forget now, a rapidly-disappearing bump on the road barely visible in the rearview as we power ahead.

Another power ballad in “Two by Two”, with some fine evocative guitar and a sort of slow blues beat. Some very good vocal harmonies and backing vocals here, kind of a sense of gospel about this too. Touches of Queen in the chorus, while there’s a much heavier guitar powering through “Resist the Devil”, perhaps as you might expect with a title like that. Some superb organ too. Turns out this is an instrumental, quite a dirty rock one to be fair. Can’t say I love it but it’s not bad. The epic then is the “GLORY BE Suite” (yeah, the first two words are written in capitals like that) and it opens on a really nice vocal harmony against a soft acoustic guitar, picking up a little speed as it goes along, the whole thing running for over sixteen minutes. It seems to be some sort of concept (or maybe the whole album is) with the main protagonist called Horizon, so go figure; I haven’t enough - or indeed really any - information to work out what the thing is about.

It goes into a powerful uptempo proggy keyboard instrumental in the fifth minute, then slows on a sort of church organ thing which gives way to a soaring guitar solo and borrows rather a lot I think from Yes around the 90125 era. Very nice slow sort of trumpeting keyboard run in the eighth minute, and vocoder with choral vocals, hear a lot of Pallas in this too, as well as Twelfth Night. There’s a lot of really good instrumentation in this piece, in fact I’d say about eighty percent of it is instrumental, however I would have to allow that it’s not quite what you’d call original, as for me, Abraham draws a little too liberally on influences from other artists, as mentioned. Not that he’s copying them, but you can definitely hear those bands in his music.

“There You Are” is another short little bopper, but a million times better than “Here I Am” (I imagine that’s intended, that they’re both kind of the same title) and this one has a much more singalong melody and a catchy tune with some cool brass. I know for a fact I’ve heard “Hey You! Come Back with My Heart” (mostly because it’s one of the most stupid and annoying titles I’ve ever heard) but I don’t know where. I thought it was Cressida, but it appears not. Anyway I can assume then that this is a cover, as is the final track, the Beatles song “Dear Prudence”. I don’t think much of the former, and sure everyone knows the latter, and he makes a good job of it.


Track Listing and Ratings

1. Horizon (9)
2. Mr. Mastermind (8)
3. Here I Am (5)
4. One Day at a Time (10)
5. Two by Two (9)
6. Resist the Devil (5)
7. The GLORY BE Suite (8)
8. There You Are (8)
9. Hey You! Come Back with My Heart (2)
10. Dear Prudence (6)


What did I like about this album? Very good instrumentation, the guy can sing and can certainly compose. Might have preferred more keyboard and the covers were a bit pointless, but overall decent.

What did I not like about this album? After such a gushing review and introduction, while the music was good it was not life-changing. Not that it needed to be, but I really expected something better than special, and while it was not a disappointment in any way, I’m not now salivating for the next album, if there is one. I could also have done without the covers and the guitar solo instrumental was just wank. I find myself wondering is there an undercurrent of Christianity here, listening to the lyrics of some of the songs. It’s not mentioned or hinted at, but there’s a sneaking suspicion of a quiet, unobtrusive agenda here.

Will I be listening to more? If there’s another album I’ll probably give it a go, though I won’t be waiting in anticipation for it. I get the feeling, however, that this may be it for this guy.

Album ratinghttps://i.postimg.cc/N0jDs0ZN/speed8.jpg


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6Sj-lQix9s

Trollheart graphics are elite!