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Pink Floyd - The Final Cut CD (album) cover

THE FINAL CUT

Pink Floyd

 

Psychedelic/Space Rock

3.18 | 2065 ratings

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The Prognaut
Prog Reviewer
5 stars I certainly have waited enough to review this album, and the time to do my part has come. I waited because I wanted to put the very exact words to describe such piece of work. Many times all along my already posted reviews I have constantly used the words "emotive", "beautiful", "masterpiece" or even "exquisite work", but this very album overshadows those adjectives by all means. It isn't only the album were Roger WATERS bares his soul for the very first time before his true deep feelings he had held in for his father's memory; it isn't only the album were Michael KAMEN (conductor of the National Philharmonic Orchestra), took over the keyboards to replace Richard WRIGHT for the very first time; and it isn't the last PINK FLOYD album James GUTHRIE produced and engineered. It is a masterfully crafted, polished gem that speaks for itself in every single tune, evoking dark, profound passages of fear, sorrow and pain. This requiem for the post war dream by Roger WATERS applies the accurate dosage of silent screams inside your head, gives away the precise amount of unspoken words to your mouth, brings out the uncontainable times you have awaken inside a dream and just to set you in front of yourself to face your inner "you", to confront the battle from within throughout WATERS eyes and ears.

From "The Post War Dream" to "Two Suns in the Sunset", this conceptual album drives the way through innumerable disturbing guitar passages and dry moments on the drums. GILMOUR and MASON compensate the lack of cohesion with WRIGHT on keyboards in this album by committing themselves to fit perfectly into the symphonic arrangements by KAMEN and into the WATERS obvious composing demands. Featuring songs like "Paranoid Eyes", "Southampton Dock" and "Not Now John", experience several moods and emotions, but the particular thing in between them, is that they all share the "Final Cut" alignments, they all contain a bit of the memories and experiences of WATERS, but most important, the band knew how to put together this farewell album in order to be believable and convincing.

I think of this album as the end of an era for the band, and as the beginning of a brand new one for some of the members apart from the PINK FLOYD experience. WATERS has already launched 5 albums on his own, WRIGHT commenced to do so back in the 80's when he released "Wet Dream" and GILMOUR came up with "About Face" (Don't want to bring up MASON and BARRET's works because that is a whole different story to be told in some other review). The remains of "The Final Cut" are still burning in some other recordings by the band with or without WATERS ("A Momentary Lapse of Reason" or "The Division Bell") and even so in the last live album by Roger, "In the Flesh".

This album is for many reasons, the best PINK FLOYD album to me. Its mysticism and sadness won my heart and my mind from the get go. I know many prog rockers out there think of it as incomplete, unconvincing and messy, but it maybe just be that in order to comprehend the true story surrounding this album, we might as well need to have wider opened ears and eyes and let ourselves drive us through it with no resistance at all. This is the PINK FLOYD album, this is the beginning and the end.

The Prognaut | 5/5 |

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