DAY FOR NIGHT

What were they thinking?? I have tried and tried to enjoy this album, but I think I can honestly say that there is little here to get excited about. To sum it up, DAY FOR NIGHT falls short by continually relying on the safe layup shot instead of going for the pin. Neal Morse's vocals sound uninspired, Nick D'Virgilio's drumming seems constrained, and Alan Morse's usual pyrotechnics are conspicuously missing. To put it in other words, DAY FOR NIGHT is the band's equivalent to DREAM THEATER's FALLING INTO INFINITY, except that DREAM THEATER's mainstream effort at least had some highlights. DAY FOR NIGHT, on the other hand, has almost nothing to speak of. The opening title track is far too long for its own good, "Gibberish" sounds better as "Thoughts" on BEWARE OF DARKNESS, "The Distance to the Sun" was perfected as "Solitary Soul" on SNOW, and "Can't Get it Wrong" is just pure mainstream mediocrity.

To put it simply, DAY FOR NIGHT stands on a sort of formless middle ground within SPOCK'S BEARD's musical progression. It seems to look back on the band's previous three releases with mixed feelings while not being exactly sure what it wants to say, itself. Unfortunately, it takes the playful, funky sounds of the band's previous three albums while abandoning the epic movements that have made SPOCK'S BEARD the mult-faceted band that it's always been. I would argue that it is this ambivalence that keeps DAY FOR NIGHT from doing anything important. It wouldn't be until the band's next album, V, that they would take a risk and venture into new territory that would cement them as one of the premier bands in the genre. Developmentally, we can accept DAY FOR NIGHT as the band's breather before it set out to create its next two masterpieces, but as a stand-alone album it is almost utterly forgettable.