NOMZAMO

I've been exploring I.Q. for a while and have avoided this album and the one after, Are You Sitting Comfortably?, and it appears I was right to do so. The band loses Peter Nicholls as lead singer, gains Paul Menel, who sounds like he's trying to imitate Nicholls, but has a slightly thinner voice. The band themselves however are the real problem: after two albums of confident, energetic prog rock with all the signature elements, varied keyboard sounds, tight instrumental sections, time changes and key changes... this album is bland, uninspired 80s music at it's absolute worst. It takes three entire songs for ANY classic elements to show themselves, and even then timidly and barely present. Not at all consistent with their earlier great work. Why did changing singers flatten the band this much? They're all the same great players as they would show once Nicholls returned. Very bizarre misstep. Only the 6th track, Human Nature, comes close to being in a league with their usuals and still doesn't quite cut it. This is so bad I need to hold off on reviewing the next one until I hear some classic sounds again.