THE DIVISION BELL

The final album Pink Floyd has released and it really is different from everything else the band has released. Where A Momentary Lapse Of Reason was full of rock songs, not all very good but some were quite interesting, the Division Bell is more pop than rock. Of course, some of the songs are rock songs that only Pink Floyd can make, but their style has really changed during the time between A Momentary Lapse and The Division Bell.

The album starts out very mellow and pretty interesting with "Cluster One", a six minute long track in the same style as Shine On You Crazy Diamond. It's very mellow and does really show that Pink Floyd was still alive when the album was made.

The second song is "What Do You Want From Me". This song reminds me a bit of the Animals album, cause it's kind of a raw, agressive rock song. I can enjoy the song pretty much 'till the three minute mark, the song gets pretty terrible there, the song turns into a very bad pop song, and that's a shame. I would have really liked it if the poppy part was left out.

"Poles Apart" is a perfect example of the pop songs on this album. The song starts out with some nice acoustic guitars, David's vocals come in and the song sounds pretty fine, but then suddenly an extremely cheesy chorus comes in, it's terrible. The song goes on for a while and suddenly a very strange trumpet break is heard, I have no idea why it's in the song. Just as "What Do You Want From Me" the song is screwed up by a cheesy, uninteresting part.

Next comes "Marooned", which is by far the best of this album, it's probably even the best song the band has made after Waters' departure. Marooned is very haunting, David's amazing guitar skills can be heard in this song and the idea of being stranded somewere on a remote island is amazingly expressed by David's guitar. I really don't have anything bad to say about "Marooned", it's simply amazing.

"A Great Day For Freedom" is a pretty nice song, it's a pretty slow song, but it really is a Floydish song. The song is very piano driven, apart from a great guitar solo and is in a kind of haunting mood, I really like that. "A Great Day For Freedom" is one of the better songs from this album.

"Wearing The Inside Out" is a song sung by Rick Wright, a great keyboard player, but not a very good singer. This song is very uninteresting, dull and doesn't sound very original. I really can't enjoy this one.

"Take It Back" is another very poppy song, but it isn't very bad at all. It is, like a lot of the songs on this album, pretty cheesy, but I still can enjoy this one. The biggest negative thing I can say about the song, is that all of the six minutes of it sound the same, there is absolutely no diversity at all.

The next song is "Coming Back To Life", a song that does have lots of diversity. It starts out with a clean guitar solo, just like "Cluster One" a bit in the Shine On mood. As soon David starts singing it gets much less interesting, but it still sounds nice. But then, the biggest anti-climax of the album shows up, an incredibly childish riff that lasts for more than three minutes. The song ends with a guitar solo, but because it's played over the childish riff it isn't an interesting one at all. Though the song starts out pretty good, it turns into a true disaster.

"Keep Talking" is a decent song. The vocals are pretty uninteresting, the dialogue like vocals make the song pretty annoying but as soon as the song reaches the solo it gets better. The solo is in fact pretty simple, it isn't as complicated as most of David's solos but it's very nice and segues into a pretty good keyboard solo. The second verse has, apart from the annoying vocals, some nice talkbox skills from David Gilmour but isn't much better than the first verse. Thanks to the solo and the talkbox the song is a decent one, but the vocals are very annoying.

"Lost For Words" is a true pop song. It's not a bad song, but it is kind of a boring song, if it wouldn't be on the album I wouldn't miss it at all.

Everybody seems to love "High Hopes", well, I don't. The song starts out with the sound of bells. The piano riff that follows also is pretty nice. The vocals however don't interest me at all. The chorus tries to be epic, but it isn't. The acoustic guitar solo sounds really much like the middle part of Welcome To The Machine, from WYWH, it's not original at all. The very lengthy outro solo is nice, David really shows his slide guitar moves and he proves he really is a master of the guitar. The solo isn't very complex, however, and David has made some other slide solo's that are much better, solos like in Marooned and Shine On You Crazy Diamond (The solo from part 6). I think "High Hopes" is really overrated and I don't think it's interesting at all.

Pink Floyd's final album is probably my least favorite of the band, it only contains one classic, "Marooned", some of the songs are decent, but most of the songs are very weak. I give this album only two stars, I am really dissapointed I have to give my all-time favorite band such a low rating, but I think the album is pretty bad.