NMB: INNOCENCE & DANGER

Fantastic double album from Prog veterans The Neal Morse Band (Neal Morse-vocals, keyboards, guitar), Eric Gillette (guitars, vocals), Mike Portnoy (drums. vocals), Bill Hubauer (keyboards, vocals), Randy George (bass). Unlike their past couple albums, this one is not a big concept album with an overarching theme, but just a collection of songs, which seems to have freed the band to do more exploring and playing with different styles and sounds, resulting in some more varied and interesting tracks. But the album is still divided into 2 distinctly different sets: Disc 1 (Innocence) consists of 8 'shorter' songs (3-8 minutes each) of varying styles, some more poppy, some more jazzy, etc., but all with strong melodies and virtuoso playing, culminating in a great progressive adaptation of Paul Simon's 'Bridge Over Troubled Water). Disc 2 (Danger) consists of 2 epic Prog tracks, 'Not Afraid Pt.2' (nearly 20 min). and 'Beyond the Years' (more than 30 min), both of which are just fantastic and shows what great bands can do with multi-part, extended length tracks. Whereas disc 1 is very good, disc 2 just takes off and soars with these incredible epic tracks, running the gamut from classical, blues, rock, jazz, pop, all worked into cohesive songs. A highpoint in this band's already impressive discography. 4.5 stars