3

In "Focus 3", FOCUS kept the mainly instrumental rock style of their previous album and expanded on a double LP; Bert RUITER replaced Cyril HAVERMANS who had left the band previously but that didn't affect too much the path of the group that was already clear. Of course, being a double album "Focus 3" has much more songs than "Moving waves" and that offers the possibility that the album could be even better but personally I'm not a big fan of double albums since I feel sometimes the greatness of the record loses itself among a lot of filler songs and repetitive movements, actually almost every album that lasts more than 50 minutes has that effect on me (ironically my favorite Progressive Rock album ever is a double album), I prefer shorter and more precise albums and this record is an example of how filler songs affect on the rating of an album.

This album offers very fresh and original tracks as "Sylvia" and "Round goes the gossip", the resemblance that FOCUS has with other Progressive Rock bands from the era (whether it was intentional or not) is undeniable, for example, the guitar line in "Answers? Questions! Questions? Answers!" reminds me a lot to NEW TROLLS while "Elspeth of Nottingham" has a lot of a GENTLE GIANT flavor. The album includes the unnecessarily long "Anonymous 2", the first part (included in the debut album "In and out of Focus") was great and here they just re-recorded it with a lot of improvisated rock in the middle section; this would have fit great on a live record but in here (at least to me) it feels as they ran out of ideas and just wanted something to fill the record.

Nothing of a bad album but not indispensable either.

SONG RATING: Round goes the gossip, 5 Love remembered, 4 Sylvia, 5 Carnival fugue, 4 Focus III, 4 Answers? Questions! Questions? Answers! 5 Elspeth of Nottingham, 4 Anonymous Two (whole), 4

AVERAGE: 4.38

PERCENTAGE: 87.50

ALBUM RATING: 4 stars

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