THE PRINCE OF HEAVEN'S EYES

On this fairytale concept album, Fruupp steering away from the complex material of their first two albums in favour of a style influenced strongly by musical theatre. Theatricality seems to be the main focus here - appropriately, since this seems to be a concept album - but occasionally this results in an excess of forced whimsy which is more likely to irritate than charm.

Musically speaking, much of the material is significantly more simple than the band's previous output, and tends towards a sort of musical theatre sound with sprinklings of Genesis-flavoured prog rather than a full-fat prog rock approach. When it works, this is reasonably charming; when it doesn't work, the album carries about it an aura of Trying Too Hard - trying too hard to be whimiscal and ending up being enervatingly twee, trying too hard to be emotional and ending up becoming sappy, and trying too hard to make a concept album because, well, everyone has to make a concept album, right?

On top of this, not only is the music less interesting this time around, but I also detect a hint of self-plagiarism. The Prince of Darkness is a jaunty tune about a demonic figure... but didn't they already do something like that on the debut with Lord of the Incubus? And wasn't that song much more interesting with its sudden instrumental breaks and its wild guitar? One rather suspects that the band went into the studio light on ideas yet again for this one - especially considering that they recorded this so soon after Seven Secrets - and without the concept to string things together they might not have been able to come up with anything at all.

It's an entertaining enough listen which will while away its running time pleasingly, but I have to see this as a big step down from Fruupp's earlier sound.