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IQ new album 'Dominion' announced.
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richardh View Drop Down
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Points: 30252 		Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote richardh Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: January 31 2025 at 00:00
Originally posted by Alard Charlton Alard Charlton wrote:

I was in contact with Martin at the time and he didn't become a truck driver. It was a a very delicate and not very nice situation between himself and Mike Holmes. Orford was also becoming disillusioned about the ( then relatively new ) download culture. 
He left and decided to give up music and concentrate on his love of steam trains. 
I believe he is back in a part time capacity with Jadis.  

I got this from Andy Edwards yt channel. I did wonder at the time if it was just Andy's attempt at a 'joke'. Appears so! LOL
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essexboyinwales View Drop Down
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Originally posted by Hrychu Hrychu wrote:

IMHO Road of Bones had significantly less memorable "hooks" let's say than Frequency. It was still a delicious album though. But Resistance, for my tastes, is a clear step down. Songwriting-wise, it shows clear symptoms of the band running out of ideas. I hope IQ will bring back some of the "hummable" qualities of their older works on their upcoming album.


For me Resistance was a huge step down from ALL their previous albums, including those with Paul Menel on lead vocals.

If I score IQ albums out of 100, every album would score over 90 except Resistance, which would score more like 60-65. So many dull tracks on that album🤦🏼‍♂️
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richardh View Drop Down
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^ It may be the curse of the double album perhaps. The Road Of Bones was not originally envisaged as a double but became one after fans overwelmingly purchased the 2 disc version. Frequency was a much tighter affair and also featured one of the best English prog drummers Andy Edwards (now more famous for his yt channel it seems). However Neil Durants keyboard programming is exquisite on Resistance and creates a wonderful soundscape for the music. I feel it's a much more interesting album than TROB which pretty much repeats the track Further Away and shows virtually no musical progression in ideas. Prog is not always about 'the songs'.

IQ top 5 for me
1. Ever
2. The Wake
3. Frequency
4. Tales From The Lush Attic
5. The Seventh House

Most overrated IQ album - Dark Matter. If ever an album showed a band running on fumes that was it IMO. Never rated it better than a 3 star album in PA terms.

However for me the Paul Menel albums have to be at the bottom. He was never a good fit although I admire him as an artist in his right. His attempt at a prog epic with Human Nature was quite good fun actually and I love the song Nothing At All. Also No Love Lost was decent. Imagine Duran Duran had become a prog band and you have IQ in the Menel years..
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Heart of the Matter View Drop Down
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essexboyinwales View Drop Down
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Originally posted by richardh richardh wrote:

^ It may be the curse of the double album perhaps. The Road Of Bones was not originally envisaged as a double but became one after fans overwelmingly purchased the 2 disc version. Frequency was a much tighter affair and also featured one of the best English prog drummers Andy Edwards (now more famous for his yt channel it seems). However Neil Durants keyboard programming is exquisite on Resistance and creates a wonderful soundscape for the music. I feel it's a much more interesting album than TROB which pretty much repeats the track Further Away and shows virtually no musical progression in ideas. Prog is not always about 'the songs'.

IQ top 5 for me
1. Ever
2. The Wake
3. Frequency
4. Tales From The Lush Attic
5. The Seventh House

Most overrated IQ album - Dark Matter. If ever an album showed a band running on fumes that was it IMO. Never rated it better than a 3 star album in PA terms.

However for me the Paul Menel albums have to be at the bottom. He was never a good fit although I admire him as an artist in his right. His attempt at a prog epic with Human Nature was quite good fun actually and I love the song Nothing At All. Also No Love Lost was decent. Imagine Duran Duran had become a prog band and you have IQ in the Menel years..




Common Ground, from Nomzamo, is one of my very favourite IQ tracks. Nomzamo was my first album of theirs and I played it to death. And I still love it! AYSC? was more commercial but still is a fantastic album.

I’ve never made a connection between IQ and Duran Duran though😂
Heaven is waiting but waiting is Hell
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Jared View Drop Down
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Originally posted by essexboyinwales essexboyinwales wrote:


I’ve never made a connection between IQ and Duran Duran though😂

Maybe DD are a bit of a stretch, but I always used to think of the Menel albums as being a slightly more 'prog' version of Ultravox... 
Music has always been a matter of energy to me. On some nights I believe that a car with the needle on empty can run 50 more miles if you have the right music very loud on the radio. Hunter S Thompson
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richardh View Drop Down
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Originally posted by Heart of the Matter Heart of the Matter wrote:


Great stuff indeed. Mike Holmes take a bow Clap
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Rexorcist View Drop Down
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Then I need to get to their whole catalog soon.
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Originally posted by essexboy essexboy wrote:

Most overrated IQ album - Dark Matter.
Lmao. Do you have any valid arguments to back up this bold claim? "Boo! Popular progarchives critics love this record, but I don't!!" is not one of them.

I personally love Dark Matter. It has some of the catchiest leifmotifs in the whole catalog, plus it's very nicely balanced with the technical playing imo. Harvest of Souls is my favorite IQ epic. It just has such a well constructed flow to it. No subsection sticks out tbh.

Edited by Hrychu - February 23 2025 at 04:30
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Rexorcist View Drop Down
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I actually just heard Dark Matter again recently, and I do admit that there's talent in the melodies and riffs, but it's also a bit familiar in the symphonic prog vein it's going for.  I also listened to The Seventh House a while back and found it more wide ranging and surprising.

Edited by Rexorcist - February 23 2025 at 05:35
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Hrychu View Drop Down
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Originally posted by Rex Rex wrote:

I actually just heard Dark Matter again recently, and I do admit that there's talent in the melodies and riffs, but it's also a bit familiar in the symphonic prog vein it's going for. I also listened to The Seventh House a while back and found it more wide ranging and surprising.
Fair enough. I'm on the other hand a huge fan of the most cliché'd and standard symphonic prog tropes you can imagine, provided they're used in the context of great music.

The way IQ utilizes those tropes on Dark Matter triggers a very specific retro-prog area of my nerdy brain.
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moshkito View Drop Down
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Hi,

So far, what I have heard is nice. Not quite spectacularly great, but nice, and (perhaps) a bit pop'y for my tastes, or at least ... conventional. That's not to say that there are not nice things, but maybe I was expecting a bit more from a band that has been around for a long time.

I'm not exactly one for the conventional sounding things at all, and much prefer a more experimental attitude, rather than a simple, play the lyrics kind of thing, which for me, is a bit tiresome, as I am a writer and words have special meanings, and many times, some of these lyrics are ... very trying! I live for my vision and the words are how those visuals can be described, and I can easily see when others do the same, but more often than mot the majority of the rock lyrics are in the area of let's pretend. And I'm not even a let's pretend person when telling the young ones bedtime stories, which have a special place in my heart.
Music is not just for listening ... it is for LIVING ... you got to feel it to know what's it about! Not being told!
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Rexorcist View Drop Down
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Originally posted by Hrychu Hrychu wrote:

Originally posted by Rex Rex wrote:

I actually just heard Dark Matter again recently, and I do admit that there's talent in the melodies and riffs, but it's also a bit familiar in the symphonic prog vein it's going for. I also listened to The Seventh House a while back and found it more wide ranging and surprising.
Fair enough. I'm on the other hand a huge fan of the most cliché'd and standard symphonic prog tropes you can imagine, provided they're used in the context of great music.

The way IQ utilizes those tropes on Dark Matter triggers a very specific retro-prog area of my nerdy brain.

Well you gotta go with the trigger.  In the context of raw favoritism, that's one of the most important things.

It's pretty rare for me to consider an album 10/10 if it follows a singular genre.  You'd have to make sure practically ever song is amazing for that to be the case.  This has in fact happened before, however, notably with the albums Songs of Leonard Cohen, South of Heaven by Slayer and Almoraima by Paco de Lucia.  It may also help if you have a strong theme which is lived up to in spades, such as The Disintegration Loops.  Otherwise, a diverse and great album suggests that you're good at more than just one thing, which is why I prefer diversified albums and even started that neo-prog recs thread.
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richardh View Drop Down
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Originally posted by Hrychu Hrychu wrote:

Originally posted by essexboy essexboy wrote:

Most overrated IQ album - Dark Matter.
Lmao. Do you have any valid arguments to back up this bold claim? "Boo! Popular progarchives critics love this record, but I don't!!" is not one of them.

I personally love Dark Matter. It has some of the catchiest leifmotifs in the whole catalog, plus it's very nicely balanced with the technical playing imo. Harvest of Souls is my favorite IQ epic. It just has such a well constructed flow to it. No subsection sticks out tbh.

It was actually my comment and not that of Essexboy. We were chewing the cud so to speak. I think it's a 3 star album personally and of course that is my personal opinion. It stands or falls on Harvest Of Souls which even for IQ is incredibly close to the 'We want to be Genesis' template, so achingly so it's painful. The band was running out of ideas after the great run of Ever through to Seventh House and Martin Orford left not long after, partly disillusioned with the biz, partly because of the comparison they had invited to Genesis and the inevitable comments. At the end of the day there is only one band I like more than IQ so I am judging them by a different standard as I do with ELP. People like Dark Matter fine. If that can be an entry point for them then it's doing a job at least.
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essexboyinwales View Drop Down
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Originally posted by richardh richardh wrote:

Originally posted by Hrychu Hrychu wrote:

Originally posted by essexboy essexboy wrote:

Most overrated IQ album - Dark Matter.
Lmao. Do you have any valid arguments to back up this bold claim? "Boo! Popular progarchives critics love this record, but I don't!!" is not one of them.

I personally love Dark Matter. It has some of the catchiest leifmotifs in the whole catalog, plus it's very nicely balanced with the technical playing imo. Harvest of Souls is my favorite IQ epic. It just has such a well constructed flow to it. No subsection sticks out tbh.


It was actually my comment and not that of Essexboy. We were chewing the cud so to speak. I think it's a 3 star album personally and of course that is my personal opinion. It stands or falls on Harvest Of Souls which even for IQ is incredibly close to the 'We want to be Genesis' template, so achingly so it's painful. The band was running out of ideas after the great run of Ever through to Seventh House and Martin Orford left not long after, partly disillusioned with the biz, partly because of the comparison they had invited to Genesis and the inevitable comments. At the end of the day there is only one band I like more than IQ so I am judging them by a different standard as I do with ELP. People like Dark Matter fine. If that can be an entry point for them then it's doing a job at least.


I used to think that DM was their weakest album. Not by much! But it’s grown on me and I can’t really fault it. (and Resistance is a pale shadow of it). HOS is one of their finest epics (with TNM and TLHG) and Sacred Sound opens the album superbly. The middle 3 songs aren’t stunning but they’re solid enough.
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Hrychu View Drop Down
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Quote It was actually my comment and not that of Essexboy.
Excuse me. The primitive non-rich post editor screws up quotes by inserting a lot of bullshіt HTML "DIV" tags all over the place. So I often just copy and paste the posts I want to quote and manually re-type the username in the bbcode tags. It was a brain fart on my end. I'm sorry. :)
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1st listen of Dominion (which arrived today) suggests it’s a huge return to form after the disappointing Resistance! Never Land in particular is gorgeous….
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richardh View Drop Down
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I couldn't agree less to be honest. Apart from Mike Holmes always great guitar soloing it's just about as unmemorable and pointless an IQ album ever released. I largely agree with the Notes Reviews and Nathan on Shuffle reviews on yt, both are big fans of the band but are basically being as poilte as they can be to not be too critical. 'Nothing sticks' after several listens according to them. I've heard it only once but at best it's about a 8/10 album and I'm not even sure about that at the moment (no goosebump moments and nothing remotely exciting). I don't like the mixing either , my CD copy has way too much high end and Cookie could lay off those crash symbals occasionally (please).
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Will listen to it when it is released Smile
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Zeph View Drop Down
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Originally posted by richardh richardh wrote:

I couldn't agree less to be honest. Apart from Mike Holmes always great guitar soloing it's just about as unmemorable and pointless an IQ album ever released. I largely agree with the Notes Reviews and Nathan on Shuffle reviews on yt, both are big fans of the band but are basically being as poilte as they can be to not be too critical. 'Nothing sticks' after several listens according to them. I've heard it only once but at best it's about a 8/10 album and I'm not even sure about that at the moment (no goosebump moments and nothing remotely exciting). I don't like the mixing either , my CD copy has way too much high end and Cookie could lay off those crash symbals occasionally (please).
Does your scale go to 15/10 or is that a typo?

You don't mention anything positive about the album besides guitar solos, but would rate it 8/10 or 4/5 stars (Excellent addition to any prog rock music collection)?

I'll give it a go when it's out.
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