STOAT & BOTTLE

This, the third album from this English neo-prog band makes me want to go to that tavern pictured on the front cover and drown my memories from this album in stout ale. Well, it is not that bad. But it is not an album that cheers me up too.

Haze does, tried to do commercial accessible neo prog without sounding progressive. It is like making a porn movie with five layers of clothes on. The result is an album like this.

The melodies is lacking in contents and substance. They are more pop-rock than progressive rock. The sound and vocals is firmly in the new-romantics era. The songs was probably written in this era too so no wonder. A couple of the hooks and chorus lines has been nicked from popular, multi million songs from that era. Thankfully, I cannot remember their names, but beware of thieves when going to your local tavern.

The vocalist and the musicians does a good enough job. The melodies, even the nicked and modified ones, are pretty substandard. There are a couple of decent songs here. But this album has been caught in a time warp and does not look good in this day and age. This album is a reminder how bad the 1980s really was.

2 stars