MOONBABIES

I'm obviously a collector/fan of Dream Theater and Derek Sherinian, so I collect anything related, which is why I have this album, and the only real reason.

I found this album extremely boring... I mean, it's mildly entertaining, when you hear all that psychedelic noodling stuff, but... that's ALL the album is. None of the songs have any meaning... they never really make you think about anything. Well, I'll admit, a few of them made me think I was floating in some spacecraft above a moon/planet, but that's about it.

Most of the album is basically instrumental jamming with a jazz rock/metal fusion feel to it. But to be progressive, you have to really have an art to it... that is, it should make meaning. It should be epic. It should be memorable and creative. Right here, this is just 56 minutes worth of jamming, really. Don't get me wrong, the musicians are great musicians... obviously, Derek Sherinian, etc. But there's nothing you'll really remember... nothing memorable at all. I was quite bored for the entire time. Occasionally I said oh hey, this part sounds pretty cool, but then they kind've ruined it by going from a cool part to just a jam thing full of instruments playing random notes. I mean, there's good to come out of this psychedelic noodling because it's a pretty cool thing to do... such as the instrumental part of Dream Theater's Octavarium about 3/4 of the way in, the middle of Dream Theater's Dark Eternal Night, and several things on Derek Sherinian's solo albums. But this album... it's ALL that. Nothing but that psychedelic noodling, and it gets very old very fast.

I got this album because of Derek Sherinian, and because of good reviews... but I was disappointed to tell the truth. I'm not saying it's a bad album, I'm just saying it was incredibly boring to me. The main thing it reminded me of is putting a big disorganized mixure of sounds into a melting pot, and adding a spacey theme and jazz fusion type stuff. The guitar was kinda meh... It was heavy, but too much jazz/psychedelic noodling stuff to be considered heavy metal... I don't know what to call it.

Anyway, the instrument playing of this album is magnificent, all of it is done with great skill... it's just that this isn't very... what's the word... memorable. Progressive rock is often very creative, artistic, eclectic, and epic. This is very creative... not that artistic... I'll admit it's wonderfully eclectic mixing jazz fusion with heavy metal with progressive rock with space rock. And this album is NOT epic or memorable at all... I forget what any of the songs sound like! Then again, I only listened to it once... but it's going to be hard to listen to it a second time, I'll tell you that. The fact that there's no words makes it worse. It's not that I don't mind instrumentals, but when the instrumentation is so incredibly boring that you forget what you listened to, adding words is interesting. That's why I like Liquid Tension Experiment, it's a very fun album, full of life, and different interesting experimental parts. LTE has psychedelic noodling as well, but way less than Moonbabies, and played in a much more interesting way. Moonbabies... that's all it is, is boring jam sessions of instruments playing almost improvisational stuff. It sounded like they just came up with it out of the blue, and I'd be surprised if they actually wrote it carefully and all that stuff, seeing as the random nature of it. It sounds as if 4 guys walked into a studio, just recorded whatever in a day, and then walked out.

I dunno... some of you can appreciate this, but I can't, it's boring to me. I don't consider it progressive rock, rather, I consider it just jam session rock, along with jazz fusion and metal. A good album to listen to in the background when you've got something else to put your mind on... say while you're working. Anything to take your attention off it, because if you do pay attention to it, you won't remember anymore than if it was just background music in your workshop.

2 stars out of 5.

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