MOONMADNESS

Camel's fourth album is my personal favorite one, I believe it is here when they reached the peak of their creativity: "Moonmadness" mixed the hard symphonic rock from "Mirage", the softness from "The Snow Goose" and the improvisation from the debut album and took it to the highest level.

The album starts with a short instrumental piece led by Peter Bardens' keyboards named "Aristillus", it is merely an intro, very joyful I'd say. "Song within a song" is probably the most recognizable song of this record and definitely my favorite one: the melody is very sentimental and the instrumental section ends the song with a very harmonic guitar line, absolutely fantastic. "Chord Change" is a jump to a much more moving song in the beginning, then it changes to a more relaxed section it contains a great keyboard solo approaching the end.

"Spirit of the water" is a short mainly piano-led song, the echoing of the vocals gave this song a very unique touch and it is a great piece for being right in the middle of the album. "Another night" contains some of the most interesting melody changes in the album, great bass-line in here. "Air Born" is filled with beautiful acoustic guitar arrangements in the background while the keyboards and drums have more presence; the bass line is delightful too; the end of this song sounds like the definitive end of the album, fortunately, it is not. "Lunar sea" is almost Space Rock: the resemblance to some Eloy and early Pink Floyd songs is undeniable; once again, Peter Bardens' keyboards are the led instrument of the piece while the drums, bass and guitar are accompanying the melody in a wonderful way.

This is one of the most epic albums in Progressive Rock and, if you ask me, this was probably the last Camel album containing this kind of excellent composition. This is an obligated stop in every Progressive Rock journey.

SONG RATING: Aristillus, 4 Song within a song, 5 Chord change, 5 Spirit of the water, 5 Another night, 5 Air born, 5 Lunar sea, 5

AVERAGE: 4.86

PERCENTAGE: 97.17

ALBUM RATING: 5 stars

I ranked this album #32 on my TOP 100 favorite Progressive Rock albums of all time.

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