LIGHTBULB SUN

This album is in the same league to me as the latest, Fear of a Blank Planet, although I believe that one is slightly better. Another minor difference is that this album shows the last remains of psych/space by PT shown in the 5th, 7th and 9th track. But already on this album Porcupine Tree is presenting itself as a heavy prog band on Shesmovedon and Russia on Ice. With these two songs as well as with Hatesong we are talking about the highlights of this album.

But three songs of very high quality is not really enough for a 4 starrating I'm afraid. And this hurts a bit because Russian on Ice is a very special epical effort and I would have liked to reward that in the rating but the remaining 7 songs are a vast majority quantitywise and most of these seven are at best fine songs but nothing outstanding with these. So I can only give this 3 stars (3,3).