WORLD TURTLE

When HAZE reformed as WORLD TURTLE, they took a decidedly more AOR approach to their craft. In that sense it was wise that they effected a name change, even if on this debut it's hard to ferret out the group name vs the album name.

The ingredients are largely the same as before, and the timbres of the voices and instrumentation both possess the mark of HAZE, but the compositions are more simplistic and the arrangements more reliant on riffing and hard rock cliches. If this type of music doesn't have hooks to speak of, then there's little point in the exercise, and sadly that is the case here. It's radio friendly without the friendly. "Ship of Fools", "Edge of Heaven", and "Another Country" are the only ones that really rise above average or worse. "Epitaph" typifies the high volume low quality philosophy at play. As for the trilogy of house vignettes that closes out the effort, it's sheer tedium, whatever questionable lyrical brilliance yielding to bellicose plod rock.

World Turtle would continue on in this vein for a few increasingly less interesting albums in which most high points were re-workings of early HAZE classics. A soft shelled and short lived critter.