This is a fantastic album, a real treat.
As with a previous reviewer, I have owned Phillips' Anthology for some time now, and still get a great deal of pleasure from listening to it. I promised myself that I would buy more of his solo output but didn't get around to it until browsing Amazon the other day, saw they had a selection, and got this album on the strength of reviews.
It was well worth it. Phillips has produced an album of exceptional acoustic guitar music, interspersed with keyboards on certain tracks.
At 61 songs, it would be impossible to review each track, but it is noticeable immediately how Phillips is able to make his instrument sing and tell a story. For example, you can see the spider on White Spider, you feel that Concerto De Alvarez is a serious whole piece, and the extended Parlour Suite piece puts you in the parlour with other guests.
This album will not appeal to those who only like heavy prog. For those who appreciate the classical influences, and appreciate one man's virtuosity, this is a must buy. Never has guitar music sounded as rich as this.
It will not be so long before I purchase another.
ARENA - PEPPER’S GHOST
A bit of a mixed bag. Good in parts, but not enough.
Pepper's Ghost is the last release by this British band, although a new release, with a new vocalist, is promised for 2011.
Now over five years old, the album can, in many ways, be considered as a natural progression from the excellent Immortal? and Contagion, certainly in the manner of heavy riffs and Sowden's almost prog metal like approach to the vocals. Unfortunately, I don't find it quite as interesting as its predecessors.
Bedlam Fayre opens with All The Fun Of The Fayre type effects and is really a good old fashioned classic rock riff, aside from a brief slower section mid-term. Enjoyable enough without being essential.
Smoke And mirrors is a shorter track, but with the same riffing intensity. It's all executed very well, but, again, has no progressive tendencies at all, just a rocker, which is fine if you like that sort of thing.
The Shattered Room is a longer track, at just under ten minutes long, and is a return to form for me. Some very good and decidedly understated vocals, which are, as always in his quieter moments, very Hamill like, and there is decidedly more structure and thought in this track than the two preceding ones. It's still, in the main riff, very heavy in places, but Nolan's trademark keyboards are given far more room to form the overview of the song, and, for the first time on the album, we are allowed to hear John Mitchell at his soloing best. Mid-section we get an interesting choral and key led haunted house effect, somewhat reminiscent of Genesis on Home By The Sea. Come to think of it, the Nolan solo that follows this is very much akin to Banks' work on that album. The track has a lengthy closing section which returns to the heavier theme of what preceded, but with some interesting symphonic keys layering the riffs.
The Eyes Of Lara Moon is a very enjoyable track. Melodic and dark, featuring some lovely acoustic guitar work and a gorgeous electric solo mid-section, make for a track of contrasting signatures.
Tantalus opens with a fine piano solo, and some more impressive theatrical vocals by Sowden, and this extended opening section is by far the most enjoyable and progressive on the album thus far. Mid-section features some more heavy riffing, with pounding bass and drums together with some more fine guitar solos, with, all the while, Nolan providing a strong texture. A fine, almost rock anthem, guitar solo is the highpoint of the closing section, together with Pointer drumming as if his life depended upon it. This track is a highlight of the album.
Purgatory Road takes us back to classic rock/prog metal territory. Although Nolan's keyboard work on this track is very good, and provides some interesting layers and thoughts, much of it is, to these ears, rock by numbers, and the band is so much more capable than this.
The album closes with the main epic, Opera Fanatica, which clocks in at just over thirteen minutes. The album, by the way, is, naturally for Arena, a concept one and revolves around illusions created in a Victorian theatre transforming our heroes into superheroes, although the major storyline has always, to be frank, escaped me.
The track opens with very dark, and very brooding, operatic, choral, and keyboard effects, and create a fantastic impression of bedlam akin to a Victorian asylum. This soon, unfortunately, gives way to more very formulaic riff by numbers. I'm afraid that the result on much of this album is merely a riff without a great deal of imagination. The track is at its best in the operatic sections. Sowden sounds fantastic acting his heart out, and Nolan allows himself the space to breath and create.
This is not a bad album by any means, but I do feel that the three-album sequence with Sowden had reached its natural conclusion by this time. Arena are not a prog metal band, and my main criticism of this is that, unlike its predecessors, too much of this is the riffing without the prog sensibilities that made them a great band. Nowhere near enough melody or, excepting the operatic sequences, dramatization and thought.
A good album, but by no means essential. It is to be hoped that the next release will take us back up to the usual territory.
PENDRAGON - BELIEVE
My first review of Pendragon on Prog Archives - not particularly detailed, but I enjoyed it.
I've been listening to a lot of this band's material lately and have left it a long time before I started to review any of them.
I've decided to start off with 2005's Believe, which I must stress, is not particularly representative of what went before from this great band. Indeed, it is not an exaggeration to state that this album marked a bit of a turning point, in that it moved well away from more "traditional" prog territory, to a more guitar orientated, and, dare I say it, modern feel.
It is none the worse for that. This is a very good album, and one that drips throughout with Nick Barrett's very acidic view of the world, expressed with some very good vocals.
There are some fine acoustic guitars on the whole work, and the band mix these with some very strong heavy passages.
This is also one of those albums which demands to be listened to several times before being fully appreciated, and it gets better with each listen.
If you are stepping into this album expecting a mere Genesis lite clone type of album, think again, and step back. If, however, you wish to hear a great band from the second wave of prog update their sound to a thoroughly modern, acoustic strong, almost post indie sound, then come along and enjoy the ride, because it really is thoroughly worth it.
A fantastic piece of work.
VDGG - THE PRESENT
I have been looking at the previous reviews for this album, the comeback LP from one of the genre's greatest exponents. I love this band but will post a warning to all who don't own it that if you weren't a fan before, this will not make you into one, and, further, if you are looking to purchase VDGG for the first time, then download side one only.
The first side is stunning, like they have never been away, with Every Bloody Emperor finding Hamill in scathing political form, and Nutter Alert being a gem of a track, amongst the band's best.
However, side two is a continuous block of over an hour's pointless noodling, to absolutely no pleasure or thrill to the listener at all. Great if you like that sort of thing, awful if, like me, you can't stand it.
Health warning attached to this, therefore. There is a brilliance to CD1, but the opposite to CD2.
