THE WAKE

The Wake is the second studio album from progressive rock act IQ. It´s an album I´ve owned for about six or seven years but haven´t listened to much before recently. It´s a bit of a shame though and I´ll definitely give it more spins in the future.

The music is very Genesis and Marillion influenced which means that melodic and beautiful keyboard and guitar soundscapes and generally melancholic vocals fills my ears when I listen to the songs on this album. The mood is actually pretty dark and intense at times and it suits my taste really well. Songs like Outer Limits, The Wake, The Magic Roundabout, Widow´s Peak, Headlong and the CD bonus track Dans Le Parc Du Chateau Noir are really great dark and symphonic progressive tracks. The Thousand Days is an uptempo song. Still melancholic but a bit lighter in mood than the rest of the songs I´ve mentioned. The only song I don´t like much is the silly Corners. It´s not a very good song with a strange instrument choice. Tablas and Citar ? IQ goes psychadelic rock ? I´m not impressed. The two other CD bonus songs are The Thousand Days and The Magic Roundabout in demo versions. I don´t like the idea of putting out demos as bonus tracks so that´s not a plus in my book. I´ll take it for what it is though and not judge the album any harder because of this.

The musicianship is excellent and we´re treated with lots of beautiful and varied keyboard playing from Martin Orford and the same can be said about the guitar playing from Mike Holmes. The rythm section isn´t the most exciting part of the music on The Wake but they are solid. Peter Nicholls is a great singer. I really enjoy his melancholic style. Great emotion.

The production is a bit raw but still enjoyable. With a more warm sound on the drums it could have been better IMO.

The Wake is a great second album from IQ and fully deserving a 4 star rating from me. There are some obvious flaws on the album as I described above but overall it´s an excellent album that fans of emotional and dark symphonic progressive rock should find pleasure in.