PURE

It took me a surprisingly long time to warm to Pendragon's Pure. Sure, it was immediately obvious from the dark, heavy opening passages of Indigo that this was a bit of a departure for the band, and it's rather admirable how they chose to deliberately step away from the tried and tested formula which had held true from The World to Not of This World.

However, the new sound they unveil on Pure didn't grab me at first. The fact is that they are far from the first band to combine neo-prog with darker, heavier musical styles - hell, Clive Nolan's own Arena had already been there and done that five years before on Contagion - and in this case, I wasn't sure about the logic behind it.

After a while, I started to warm to it a bit, realising that aspects of the classic Pendragon sound were woven in and out of the compositions as one thread a much richer tapestry than the band had previously attempted. Further listens, however, caused the material to diminish to my ears, since it became apparent that rather than revolutionising their sound Pendragon had simply disguised it a little by applying a bit more distortion to the guitar. Still, I have to give them props for the experiment.