STEEL UMBRELLAS

I'm afraid I will have to join the bashing of this album looking at the average rating. Well, bashing sounds a bit as if it's done in an unfair way but really, this album had it coming. It's almost as if the guys have made an agreement: hey let's make a real poor one this time after our pretty nice success with Security of Illusion. As if it's some sort of sick bet to prove they really can do that. But it's not logical; why should they ? And a record company would never agree to something like that, would they ...?

No really, all joking aside, I don't know what Saga was thinking here. I mean, Wildest Dreams and Pleasure and the Pain have also been criticized but this Steel Umbrellas is right up there with Saga's three worst albums in their discography. And they almost had me fooled with the opener Why Not? which is not really an awful song, but the next three (or four) proved why this release has such a poor reputation. Main problem are the drums. Negus is an excellent drummer but he was either uninspired or totally out of form here. And why did the rest of the band allow this one dimensional performance on almost all songs ? Even I could (almost) do this. It's way below Saga standard. And this also goes for the other instruments same as for just about all the compositions as well as production quality by the way.

The only one who's performing on normal level is mr Sadler but that's not enough of course. So a very mediocre album to say the least. It's poor really especially compared to most of their other efforts. I could even give one for this but my outmost respect for one of my favorite bands of all time prevents me from doing so and I will round up in the end (1,5).