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Kansas - Masque CD (album) cover

MASQUE

Kansas

 

Symphonic Prog

3.68 | 624 ratings

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TCat
Special Collaborator
Honorary Collaborator / Retired Admin
4 stars Here is another excellent album released by Kansas before they became a huge sensation. Even though their previous album "Song for America" was amazing, I believe I like this one better. The reason for this is because I feel Kansas was not trying to please so many different people by mixing different genres into what was becoming their signature sound. Yes, they did try throwing together a few tracks to try to attract some radio air play like they did on the last album, but this time they didn't try so much to be another type of band, they just tried making more accessible songs using their own genre. You can't blame them for that. They wanted to give the public a taste of what they had to offer. The attempt at radio friendliness was apparent in the shorter songs like "It Takes a Woman's Love", "Two Cents Worth" and "It's You". But this time around, they were trying to break into popularity by adjusting their genre to fit on the radio and not trying to be someone who they were not. The non-radio friendly songs were amazing though, just like the last album. It's for these tracks that you want to search this album out. Tracks 3, 4, 5 and 8 are progressive rock masterpieces and should be considered that. This music is well written, the album is well produced pretty much throughout and the vocals are excellent. If it were possible to give this another 1/2 star, then I rate it at 4 1/2 stars. The entire album is not quite the masterpiece that the next album "Leftoverture" would become. In that album, they proved they didn't have to adjust their sound to hit the air waves and become legendary (except for having to cater to demands from radio stations to shorten "Carry On Wayward Son"). But, it's good for proggers to know (in case you didn't already) that Kansas was not a one-shot deal, that there are a lot of other great prog masterpieces in the form of scattered tracks throughout their older albums.
TCat | 4/5 |

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