THE LIGHT

Recovering from the poorness of the 80s was not an easy thing. I, too , have actually abandoned the prog to follow newage and other music genres in search of something able to give me the sensations of the classics and I ended up to discover the 90s prog around 2005, when a colleague introdeuced me to Spock's Beard, Ayreon and mainly, to Progarchives.

This debut album hasn't been my first approach to the band's music so I can't avoid making comparisons with their further releases.

Effectively, listening to the album my first impression is of a little pretentious band. Neal Morse hasn't found yet his characteristic singing style, but the embryo of what the band will becomne up to his leaving is already present.

Probably, if I had discovered them when the album was released I could have thought to a neo-prog masterpiece: a 23 minutes long song, two other above 10 minutes and just one below. (I don't consider the bonus track).

As somebody else has written, the long tracks are patchworks of shorter songs which apparently don't have the structure of the typical prog epic. Probably this wasn't effectively in the band's intentions. The various parts in which "The Light" and "The Water" are divided are born as songs tied together. Let's say that the transitions are very well "engineered" so that they flow seamlessly as a single suite.

Not a bad album at all, very promising from a band made of very good talents (other than Morse's quite huge discography check also Ryo Okumoto's solo albums). Still immature under certain aspects, but it's a debut.

It's good enough to be not only for Spock's Beard's completionists and fans. Good and non-essential, can of course be of interest for who already knows the band. My favorite part is "Reach Of The Sky", the last section of The Waters, that's also the most "Neal Morse's standard"

Not an album to die for but nothing to be ashamed of.

3 stars