THE CODE

High Spy is a Neo-Prog band from England, officially formed in 2007. Since 2006, they have released 5 full length studio albums and also several live albums. In March of 2019, they released their 5th studio album called "The Code". The band was founded by Mark Price who does the keyboards for the band. Ade Peddie is also one of the original members of the band and is in charge of vocals and bass. Currently, Mark Stokes is the guitarist and Tony Hall is on drums.

The album "The Code" consists of 11 tracks that take up a total run time of just over 54 minutes. The music on this album has got the basic ingredients for the neo-prog sound, lots of keyboards and a concept story based on a sci-fi theme with romantic elements that involve an android or alien of some type. The music is quite lyric heavy, which, in this case, is a big mark against the album because the vocals are weak and lacking in emotion. The music is quite typical sounding for Neo-prog, except for one major issue; there is not a lot of progressiveness to it. The music is in basic measure, the melodies are pretty simple and it's not that engaging.

"I am the Code" tries to amp up the heaviness, but the guitars are quite muddled sounding, and the vocals are not convincing enough. "Love Your Face" is one of the singles released from the album, and, granted, it has a nice ballad like feel, but it is missing a hook or anything really interesting that would draw attention. There is a guest female vocalist on this track, but seems to be off-key.

At the end of the album, the 3 singles from the album are presented again, this time in their single versions. Quite frankly, they aren't any better than the regular album versions.

Overall, the album isn't very interesting. The vocals are weak, the music is fairly typical of the Neo-prog sound, except they left the prog part of it off, the music is not engaging or really that powerful, the guitars sound muffled and the keyboards are too bright, and so what we end up with is an average sounding band with bad mixing and production. Not to be harsh, but this is not one that I would pay much attention to.

Four years on from the last studio album, and High Spy are back with their fifth. Mark Price (keyboards), Mark Stokes (guitar) are there of course, along with singer Ade Peddie but for this album they have dropped to a quartet and single guitar so Ade is now playing bass. They have also brought in a 'new' drummer in Tony Hall. I'm not sure how any times I saw the mighty Grace back in the Nineties, but of course Tony and Mark (P) were in the band together back then. In many ways it can be argued that High Spy were formed out of Framework, the band Mark (P) and Arny Wheatley formed after they left Final Conflict, and prior to Mark joining Grace. After he left that band he started again, and eventually it morphed into High Spy.

This is solid neo prog, and in many ways sounds as if it was recorded some 25 years ago, and if you had been as involved in the UK scene as I was, you would have heard quite a lot of material like this, particularly on the upbeat 'I Am The Code'. It is songs like this where the band allow themselves to rock and power through that they come through best, but on the slower songs there are some issues. In many ways there are similarities to early Big Big Train as many of us had problems with the vocals, and the same is true here. When the band is buzzing along then Ade gets away with it, but on songs such as 'She Knows' he is definitely struggling. One gets the impression these slower numbers would come across better at a gig, but here they appear to meander and there is no real sense of direction or purpose. I have enjoyed Mark Price's keyboard playing for more than quarter of a century, but I just can't get on with this album at all. Maybe next time.