POWER AND THE PASSION

With Power and the Passion Eloy makes a change to more symphonic material, with epic storytelling and much more emphasis on the vocals. They forgot one thing though. In order to make that work you need a strong vocalist to front the band. And that is not exactly the case with Eloy.

The vocals are by far the weakest part of the whole Eloy endeavor and while that didn't bother me much on the two preceding albums, all of their future output suffers in quality because of them. Just as on Ocean all the talking and whiny whispering seriously distracts from the musical qualities. Also the heavy German accent is far from charming in this context.

But the music isn't always as memorable and sure not as passionate as on Inside or Floating. It's all too strained and formulaic to come alive, as if the band was trying to follow some sort of symphonic rock songwriting pattern. The result generally sounds dull and uninspired. Easily their weakest album from their 70ties output.