BEYOND THE SHROUDED HORIZON

Steve came with one of the most versatile albums of his career: Rather than following a certain music concept/story, we have a mixed bag of classical guitar, progressive rock, arena rock, blues rock and plenty of great instrumentals. Progressive influences are sometimes present, sometimes supressed to give way to other music styles. From compositional sight, I find this album inferior to "Darktown" or his 2000's efforts but I like the fresh feeling, confidence and variety make up for it. "Loch Lomond" gives a confident impression with mixture of hard-rock with excellent guitar, folk female vocals. "The Phoenix Flown" and "Wanderlust" have a recurring Hackettesque topic that I like less than on previous albums.

"Till these eyes" has a great accessible feeling and one of the best Hackett singing - this guy hasn't given up and works on his vocal delivery!

Blues is represented by earthy "Prairie Angel" and especially "Catwalk".

"Between the sunset and the coconut palms" is very symphonic with piano, violin and certain chord structure reminiscent of "Wind and Wuthering", while "Summer's breath" also could be traced to have something in common with "Unquiet Slumbers for the Sleepers". "Waking to Life" is a journey to African and bluesy world with great passionate female vocals while "Two faces of Cairo" features oriental melody and great guitar soloing.

The final epic "Turn this island Earth" is a bit disappointing to me, on one side it combines motives from previous tracks and blends them together, on the other hand, there are some bit experimental parts not of great interest to every prog listener.

If you can, get the special edition with bonus tracks because they add one more star to this album - almost all are instrumental, quite remarkable, memorable and of high quality. You'll hear when you start listening to the "Four Winds"!

Together with bonus tracks, 4 stars guaranteed easily!