HEATWAVE

Nothing short of amazing and certainly an RIO favorite of mine. Heatwave may not be regarded as their best, other than me. The band was on the verge of disintegrating with Daniel Denis writing two of the "shorter" pieces and Andy Kirk with the side-length and one "shorter" piece. Regardless I can't see any weakening of their music, it's just as challenging and uncompromising as anything they did before. While UZED clearly shows an electric approach, Heatwave expands on that. As usual it's really difficult to distinguish one cut to another but the music is so wonderfully off-the-wall I don't mind. Unusual chord structures and time signatures, blatant disregard for anything remotely resembling a pop hook, doing everything to not guarantee radio airplay and t that's what I love their music for. Of course this is not Rock in Opposition for nothing, totally challenging the rock status quo. This came out in 1986 apparently as a band released CD before Cuneiform Records made it widely available the next year. To think this came out at a time of MTV-friendly synth pop and hair metal this is as far removed from that as possible. While classic prog was floundering in the '80s, neo-prog took its place but not everyone came on board, RIO was at its musical heights in that decade and what Univers Zero did only proves that. Heatwave is an amazing album as far as I'm concerned. No such thing as a bad UZ album!