FREQUENCY

This is the only IQ album I own, and has certainly convinced me I need to buy some more! An extremely solid album with barely any boring or uninteresting points and more that a few truly beautiful sections, Frequency is a brilliant piece of meandering prog. Riffs come and go very fast, and the songs usually evolve slowly this way (example - riff 1, riff 2, riff 1, riff 2, riff 3, riff 4, riff 5 etc.). The signing from Peter Nicholls is very good; quite unique in my experience. Also standing out is the very good drumming from Andy Edwards which is almost always interesting and keeps the tracks very fresh.

The album is very guitar and synth driven - with many, many great solos from both! Often, the guitar will replace the voice as the main melodius instrument, which is very interesting - guitars are different that voices as a melodic instrument, they are faster, and can express in different ways. But the guitars are also often found in the backround, playing a sort of violin-like role of playing a secondry accompanying melodies.

"Stronger Than Friction", "One Fatal Mistake" and "Ryker Skies" all segue together, so can be considered an epic track (at 25 minutes). These are all great pieces with great sections and are very good at holding your interest.

One of the lower points of the album is "Life Support", mostly for me because it follows the disgusting chord sequence of many a crappy pop song (I-V-vi-IV) - you can recognize it straight away if you've ever heard Green Day. However, it's pretty damn elitest to hate a song just because if it's chord sequence, and"Life Support" is more complex than your average Green Day song - with variations and nicermelodies. Also, about half way through, it straight up abandons that sequence and bursts into an exciting instrumental section.

I should really be trying to avoid this, but there are some really standout moments in songs for me - for example, at one point, in "Frequency", all of the synths and guitars thin out and Andy comes in with some fast hi-hats, and a riff and vocals slowly come in around this - it is extremely beautiful.

In conclusion, this album is a constantly evolving masterpiece. It just loses the fifth star because not all the songs are amazing - some are just above average, but this is a great album which you can listen to from start to finish and it never has a geniuinly weak momens (except maybe "Life Support"). I give it a:

4.2/5

***** songs "Frequency", "Stronger Than Friction" "The Province"

**** songs: "Life Support" (the first part is *** but the second part is *****) "Ryker Skies", "Closer", "One Fatal

Mistake"