AS THE WORLD

This has to be one of the most beautiful albums made in the 1990s and is quite possibly my favorite album by these American modern prog rockers. Often unfairly lumped in with a retro tag, Echolyn manage to create some of the most refreshing progressive rock music of the 1990s and 2000s. If you like Yes, Gentle Giant, or if you're looking for something new with a symphonic edge of excitement, some accessibility, yet some of the most tight and crazy time signatures and changes, then look no further!

Because this album has 16 tracks, I'm not going to a song-by-song review. I'll just go over some of my personal highlights.

Things get started quickly and very nicely with All Ways the Same/As the World, which is quite a good opening track and may be their most Gentle Giant-influenced track. Best Regards very well may be my favorite track (if I was forced to choose at gunpoint), simply because it manages to squeeze all of what Echolyn is about into one song. I could easily hit the repeat button on this one over and over, and the instrumental interplay is absolutely genius. Never the Same is possibly one of the most simple tracks on the album, being only in 3/4, but it is nonetheless an amazingly beautiful closer clocking in at the longest track on the album. It starts with a glorious flute opening, accompanied soon by strings, building into an amazing opening segment and opening like a flower before your eyes when it breaks into an acoustic guitar part and Weston's vocals come in. The rest of the song does not disappoint. You have to hear it to believe it.

All of these songs are so good, I can't find a flaw in any of them, and it's really hard to even pick those highlights. Buy this album immediately if you call yourself a fan of prog. 10/10.

An absolute modern masterpiece of prog that I recommend infinitely to anyone, unless you only like extremely inaccessible RIO and/or are very closed-minded. Even still, you should get it, since this is THAT good.