CAPTAIN BEYOND

There's this elite group of albums, or should I say music pieces, which catch your attention from the first to the last second. They're also often ment and made to be listened as a whole. Well, this is one of these albums. It demands to be listened from the beginning to the end to be fully enjoyed - no skipping, repeating, shuffling or stopping is advisable. Music just builds, flows and changes effortlessly. There's not a moment of boredom or strain here, everything is of the same high quality; listener is really treated like a king. Taste is a word that could describe this gem. This is basically hard rock enriched with lots of progressive elements in a perfect manner. Music is diverse, yet very constant and compact, songs are wonderfully connected together.

Album opens with ''Dancing Madly Backwards (On A Sea Of Air)'' and seconds after you ''taste'' the sound get an idea about the whole thing - an elaborate and inventive hard rock with all the band members in great shape: both Reinhardt and Dorman do better job than they did in IRON BUTTERFLY; Evans' engaged singing fits the music perfectly; Caldwell's drumming is crisp, precise and diverse. Album continues with ''Armworth'', a shorter song in a similar hard style as the opener, while ''Myopic Void'' offers more spacy sound with nice guitar work. Towards the end of the song theme from the first song reprises. Very good. ''Mesmerization Eclipse'' is powerful and straightforward, yet tasteful and proggy hard rock with more great guitar riffing and drumming. ''Raging River Of Fear'' starts even heavier and gets even proggier. Exqusite! ''Thousand Days Of Yesterday (Intro)'' is a nice, welcomed acoustic break. ''Frozen Over'' gets things back on hard-prog track brilliantly. What a superb, heavy song! It's very hard to stay focused and original as these guys manage to do.

Story continues with already known ''Thousand Days Of Yesterday (Time Since Come And Gone)''; this time it's faster and more progressive; beautiful balance between harder and mellower aspects of the album, again excellently executed. ''I Can't Feel Nothing (Part 1)'' starts in a slightly bluesy, even funky way, while remaining progressive. Near the end, it transforms in - guess what - fast, hard rock. Smoothness of these transitions is enticing. ''As The Moon Speaks (To The Waves Of The Sea)'' starts as a gentler, quieter, a bit spacy song. But again, that doesn't last for very long - soon it explodes and eventually melts into guitar driven 16 second break titled ''Astral lady''. ''As The Moon Speaks (Return)'' comes back in a quieter fashion followed by well known guitar work and a fast, short drum solo. Superb. ''I Can't Feel Nothing (Part 2)'' kicks in with 'Oooh, here it comes!' just to reminds us to all of the heaviness and power of this masterpiece. What a journey!

Lyrics are thoughtful and interesting enough, dealing with ethereal themes and introspection, and contribute to overall great impression. Production quality is very good and cover ranks among the 70's best.

The best hard rock album as far as I'm concerned, 35 minutes of perfection. 5 stars without a doubt.