SWEET FREEDOM

Musically this is an very good heavy prog album. Once again Mick Box proves that he is an undersung guitar hero playing blazing leads, wah wah guitar and heavy riffs with remarkable proficiency. Hell, he shreds. Ken Hensley and the rest of the boys are in top form as well. The music is heavy, yet emotionally uplifting. There's a positive vibe on this album that works quite well. Musically this is an excellent album. Where it fails and why I gave it two stars is because Dave Byron (never one for subtlety) is completely over the top in his use of vibrato and overly dramatic phrasing of the execrable lyrics. He is simply out of control. If the producer could have reined him in the album would be much better. Except for the awful lyrics that is. They're so bad that I can't use my usual strategy of ignoring them and it doesn't help that Dave's voice is high in the mix. They ruin the experience for me. Most of the lyrics have dropped the sort of fantasy elements from previous albums and have instead concentrated on love. Which is ok, if not completely predictable but do they have to be on the level of The world is a apple with LOVE at the core!! Oh my, they're kidding right? No, unfortunately. It gets worse. At the end of the otherwise excellent Seven Stars David starts singing the alphabet! abcdefg... etc. Pretty much reducing the song to a trite joke. There are other examples that are too numerous to fully enumerate such as the overuse of the word dreams. Like I said before, a good producer would have eliminated much of the silliness, what were they thinking?