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Argent - Argent CD (album) cover

ARGENT

Argent

 

Crossover Prog

3.12 | 93 ratings

From Progarchives.com, the ultimate progressive rock music website

jammun
Prog Reviewer
3 stars Well, just how proggy can an album be if Three Dog Night covered one of the album's best songs? Obviously, we're not looking at nor listening to rocket science or brain (salad) surgery with Argent's first album.

I need to put on my wayback-machine ears here. A lot of this sounds like typical 70's rock -- great vocal harmonies, great melodies, powerful keyboards, chucka-chucka guitars, and in the end not much happening. But there's a big however: this album was recorded on the front-end of the 70's. In other words, it's a template for what many of us associate with the typical 70's rock sound, because it is one of the sources. You'll hear sounds here that were successfully appropriated by various 70's bands. So Lonely Hard Road engenders a Doobie Brothers sound. Liar, or at least its intention and invective, shows up on Fleetwood Mac's Rumours.

It's not surprising, really. Rod Argent came to the band via The Zombies, one of the more intelligent of the original British Invasion bands. Argent's keyboards are invariably perfect, and the rest of the band, while not exactly capable of causing one's jaw to drop, provide a perfectly competent background.

The prog tendencies are here: the guitar intro to Like Honey and the mid-song passages with swirling vocals and Hammond, the Hammond intro and subsequent second- and third-harmonics of The Feelings Inside. And Stepping Stone almost reaches velocity here and there.

This is a pretty decent first album for the band. There's a competent rock writer (Ballard) and an above- competent keyboardist trying to find their way. They hit some decent high points here and there, but never really pull it all together. It's a good listen if one's expectations are not too high, especially for those who appreciate keyboards.

jammun | 3/5 |

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