ACT III: LIFE AND DEATH

The story continues and now we are at Act III of the six act rock opera by The Dear Hunter. Casey still has a full band though with a few line up changes. In Act III, the songs are shorter on the average and none of them hit the six minute mark this time. There is a lot more narrative to the story in this act, and I don't know if that is the reason why or if they were just cutting things back to make it more accessible. Since I really don't see any quality in the music cut back, I would rather believe the first option.

Because of the shorter songs, there seems to be less development going on, but things still remain at a high quality. As the story of the main protagonist quits his relationship with the hooker, joins the military and is saved from death, he finds his father, learns he has a half brother in the military also who is actually the soldier that saved him. His half brother up getting killed. His father shows no emotion and this enrages the main character who ends up poisoning his father. The main character takes on his half brother's identity since they looked a lot alike in order to go live with his step-mother. His life is falling apart and he is on a downward spiral.

The songs continue to be emotional and dramatic. Harmonies are beautiful, melodies are amazing, the vocals are as great as ever, instrumentals and arrangements are superb all as they were before. A little something is missing though, and I think it is the lesser chance for the songs to breathe and develop. It's not a major problem in this case, as everything else is spot on, and again I think it is because there was so much more story to cover in this album. The songs move from one style to another, but there is still a feeling of cohesiveness in all of this.

After this album, The Dear Hunter would take a break from the story, so the last song acts like a nice build up before the intermission. The band would next release the box set called "The Color Spectrum" which would consist of a collection of 9 ten inch EPs with 4 songs each based on the colors of the rainbow plus black and white. Then there would be a stand alone album. The story will continue after this point.

This rock opera continues to amaze and features some great music with a lot of progressive rock and dramatic singing. This particular part of the story seems to lack development among the songs, and that lowers the rating here one star. However, this was the first album I owned by the band and I was still impressed enough to get the rest of the series. Imagine my surprise when the other albums were even better than this. I don't regret ever buying this one though. It's on white vinyl and I paid $30.00 for it, now it's worth $200.00, so that makes it even better. So, a little drop in the rating at 4 stars, but still an excellent addition to any collection.