TRANSFORMATION

I originally started listening to this band in the late 70's, when I found "Surveillance", and then "Black Noise" at used record stores. I later found "City Of Fear", but then, as I liked this band, but wasn't blown away by them, I missed their later releases.

Listening to the 4 tracks the latest edition of FM posted this year on ProgStreaming, I was intrigued enough to purchase the CD.

This new album, with only Cameron Hawkins from the early albums (Martin Deller had performed with the band as late as 2006), does not veer much from their original sound, but does seem to qualify, to my ears, as a fully qualified prog album. Their use of odd time signatures is quite adept, and often so smooth that the listener may easily overlook that they are not hearing 4/4.

There is still a similarity to Rush in the composition of the songs, but the performance is markedly lighter than their country mates. Also helping the sound to become more original are the strings of Edward Bernard and Aaron Solomon. Their dueling violin/viola create some of the best moments on the album.

The absolute best song here is "Children Of Eve". It is the darkest track of the album, with syncopated verse sections, and a delightfully odd blues-related chorus.

The biggest problem of the album is production. You can discern all of the individual instruments, but the mix has an overly compressed sound, and even on my best stereo, the very lows and highs just have no punch.

All-in-all, this is a good album, and just barely earns a 4 star rating from me. Hopefully they will continue in this vein.