HEAVEN AND HELL

I'm surprised at how highly rated this album is but Vangelis does have his fans.This was released in 1975 and comes off sounding like a bad Mike Oldfield album. He followed his pattern with the two side long suites and we even get sleigh bells at one point.The problem is that to my ears this sounds awful much of the time. Especially the sounds of the synths and the sound of those vocal melodies on track one and that's just the start. I found his previous album "Earth" to have a lot of excellent tracks and passages and for me it's a much better album that this one.

"Heaven And Hell Part One" kicks in around a minute but as I mentioned i'm not a fan of those vocal expressions at all.The tempo will continue to shift. A change after 4 1/2 minutes as we get lots of keyboards and those vocal melodies that will come and go. Sleigh bells before 11 1/2 minutes. A calm 13 minutes in and it turns out to be quite beautiful. It stops 17 minutes in as a new soundscape takes over and Jon Anderson starts to sing in this pastoral section to end the first suite. "Heaven And Hell Part Two" opens with atmosphere and sparse sounds that come and go. It kicks in before 3 1/2 minutes with intricate sounds. It stops before 7 minutes and then changes to a haunting section which ends around 10 minutes.Then we get some haunting vocal melodies with church bells. A new sound before 15 1/2 minutes that sounds like a marching band playing (not good). A calm before 18 minutes and it stays pastoral o the end.

A big disappointment overall and defintely for fans only.