THE VISITOR

Arena

Neo-Prog

4.10 | 777 ratings

From Progarchives.com, the ultimate progressive rock music website

Another in a series of highly convincing Arena albums. Arena was the first neo-progband that I learnt to know as I am from the younger generation. IQ followed shortly afterwards.

This album,in comparison to the two previous ones, places more focus on composition and less on classic prog-rock arrangements or solos that were more typical before.

Melancholy compositions are represented, too, and these are Arena's strong weapon - for example "A crack in the ice".

"Double vision" has expressive synths and beautiful guitar solo, it is classic neo-prog traits and some similarities to Marillion.

"Elea" is one of numerous Arena fantastic instrumental pompous tracks with keyboard layers and guitar solo.

Genesis intimacy creeps in in "Hanging tree", acoustic guitar helps to identify it. One of the most memorable Arena moments comes in the middle: Absolutely doomy guitar part (sounds inspired by doom-metal) is decorated with slow synths. At least the end of the song is more optimistic. A great composition.

"In the blink of an eye" is quite an equilibristic composition with multiple keyboards including piano, so much going on in 5 minutes.

"Serenity" could be taken for a Brian May song because of the guitar style. "Tears in the rain" may please fans of symphonic ballads. The title track is another classic with excellent vocal and guitar melodies. It sounds like a recapitulation of the previous album moments.

sgtpepper | 4/5 | 2019-10-19

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