THE WHIRLWIND

In short, this record was well worth the wait. It is tremendous in every way. Great melodies everywhere, tons of hooks, lots of great instrumental work, and both a great beginning and finish. Really, while the first disc is technically a 77-minute song, it is really like 12 songs that all run together. Think of it almost like a concept album, where there are recurring melodies and themes, but most of the songs do stand on their own as great stand-alone songs, so we get the best of both worlds. The bonus disc has four new songs as well. Spinning, in particular, is just dynamite; clearly written by Roine Stolt, it has Yes written all over it. It also has four covers, several of which are nice, and several of which are kind of meh. Their cover of Santana's Soul Sacrifice is pretty sick; it was laid down in one take, with all four guys doing percussion following the take.

I have seen accusations of this sounding like a Neal Morse solo record but with different musicians all over the place, and honestly, that doesn't make any sense at all. I mean, shouldn't it go without saying that the writing style of the primary songwriters, of which Morse is obviously one, are gonna come out in a project like this, regardless of how collaborative the effort is? I mean, songs like Spinning, Out of the Night and Evermore would have all fitted right at home on a Flower Kings record, so can we say that too much of the record sounds a Flower Kings record? Roine Stolt and Pete Trewavas quite obviously contributed far more on this record than they did on the first TA records. In fact, Roine Stolt has stated that this record was much more of a collaborative effort than the first two TA records. Plus, the prog rock styles of Morse and Stolt are both so distinctive, that it would pretty difficult for either of them to write a lot of material and have much of it NOT sound like their respective styles.

As for Neal's lyrics, his christian lyrics are only heard in a few songs, and even then, they are not as obvious as most of the ones on his solo records. Besides, if the three other guys in Transatlantic, none of whom write religious lyrics on a regular basis, had a problem with his lyrics, simply put, they wouldn't have made it on to the record. The spiritual overtones are no more overt than the ones on the first two TA records.

In short, if you are a fan at all of the first two Transatlantic CDs, odds are that you will dig this one like crazy, too.