THE FINAL CUT

Why is this even considered prog rock? According to this website this album is "Psychedelic/Space rock". There is nothing remotely psychedelic about this album, and very little proggy about it. But that's okay, an album doesn't have to be prog for me to enjoy it...too bad this isn't enjoyable at all. It should have never been made and maybe released as a bonus outtake disc for "The Wall".

So the Wall was Waters singing about himself and his mental state, and now he's written an anti-war album, with music as boring as boring can get (almost). Bland, stolen melodies, mostly played with no vigor on the acoustic guitar, with occasional guitar solos from David Gilmour, and minimal drumming from Nick Mason. Richard Wright and his rich, textured keyboards that helped to define their classic albums was fired previously by Waters, so he's not here to liven things up. The music is slow, boring and uninspired, with irritating vocals from Waters.

So what's good about this? I suppose you might like the concept. I don't, but at least it sounded like Waters put a little bit of thought into it. The opening song "The Post-War Dream" is a sort of powerful number, with a nice progression. It's a total rip-off melodically of folk standard "Sam Stone", but whatever, at least it's listenable. A few tracks later, "The Hero's Return is kind of a nice song. It's got cool guitars at the beginning. At the very end of the album "Not Now John" is the only real rocker song here, largely thanks to a good rock vocal from Gilmour, but of course Waters takes over the second half of the song. There are some more sort of good moments of the album, but they're stuck in amongst blandness.

After this album, Waters left and Gilmour took over. Unfortunately, their next album "Momentary Lapse of Reason falls into 80s prog rock, and is their only 80s sounding album, but imo, at least it's more lively, proggier, and musically better than this boring and unnecessary "Floyd" album.

I'd give it a "D".