ISHQ

This is a world fusion album with a very clear political message as stated in the booklet:

....."The economies of the 21st century are being built on a metaphysics that died in the 17th century. These metaphysics are dead and all life forms are atomistic constitutions of dead matter. Modern economy is based on theft. The WTO rules legitimize that theft. The present rules are high tech rules for slavery. The culture that we are living in is an infantile culture. The world is set on a course of catastrophe.".......

A message that I can fully support BTW. For this review, I'd like to put this a bit aside, what's not that easy since it's a very essential part of this work. Even if one concentrates exclusively on the music, one has to admit that this is a great album. It's actually very difficult to describe, one really has to listen to it. Oriental vocals and percussion, perfectly melt together with elements of folk and hardrock, driving guitars, great violin and grooving rhythms. It's definitively not another one of these "west meets east-kinda world music" albums, it's completely different. An absolute masterpiece and an essential album for anyone interested in general humanistic questions and actually it should be listened by all fanatics from any religion and all political and economic leaders of western world who are mainly responsible for all the misery and terrorism in our one and only world that belongs to everybody!

Although possibly being not an essential one in prog in general, I would say this great album is worth 4 (or even 4 1/2 stars)!