UNDER A NEW SIGN

Knight Area's Under a New Sign finds the band experimenting a little with diversifying the synth-heavy Arena-influenced neo-prog sound of their debut album. Perhaps the most notable departure from this approach is Courteous Love, an epic love song with fairly minimal (by Knight Area's standards) keyboard interventions until the end. Their take on a love song crossed with ELP's Lucky Man, maybe? Either way, that's about as far from their comfort zone as they drift this time around; overall, I'd say the material on the album isn't quite as strong as on the debut, but it's still a competent enough effort thanks to the slightly increased diversity of the music, even if it doesn't exactly set the world on fire.