CODE BREAKER

Realeased in 83,well passed their expiration date,this album dosen't have much to do with the rest of the band's discography.Former keyboardist/singer/main songwriter Christian Simard is nowhere to be found and it shows. The band opts for English as they did for their first couple of albums more than a decade erlier(Mors code Transmission and MCT II) but unlike those early albums,there is no freaky jams,no psychedelia and not much prog either. For unknown reason(and quite silly too)they even anglicise their names! Danilel LeMay becomes Daniel May and Michel Vallée becomes Mike Valley.UGH!!! The best song is the longest ''Help the Man'' where they strech a bit and flute can be heard,but sadly there isn't much more than this. The rest of the album is typical 80's corporate rock that was prevalent at times:REO Speedwagon,Foreigner,TOTO ect.... They even openned for Asia on a few Canadian dates,when Asia were at their peak,playing beore huge crowd,still that didn't help sales figures and they once more disbanded. Their 1995 second comeback effort is a lot better,due to the fact that Simard is back at the helm and they resort to french. A Cd was released by Unidisc in the 2000's but this album is better left for completists. Go for either ''La Marche des Hommes'', ''Procreation'' or ''Je suis le Temps'' all recently re- issued by progQuebec.

If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all... or in this case, not much. The unsettled career of this band was a virtual mirror to the shifts that occurred in music throughout the 70s and 80s, and they changed with the tide like a sand crab. This record, the very definition of corporate rock, was really the last straw creatively and revealed the intention of a group of skilled players to sell some records. As a result, it is a feeble if well-executed selection of commercial music with a dash of prog rock for flavor. The one decent cut, 'Hall of Mirrors', is a good pop tune and had FM blockbuster written all over it but like some evil plot engineered by record executives with plenty of money but a tin ear, Morse Code's 'Codebreaker' can best be described as what would happen if Eddie Jobson produced a collaboration between Survivor and Loverboy.