FORSAKEN INNOCENCE

Ever since Drifting Sun made an unexpected return to action in the mid-2010s, their output has been a little up and down. Trip the Life Fantastic, the first album of their revival, felt like an album where they were shaking off the cobwebs and testing the water rather than really putting their best foot forward, but Safe Asylum was a marked improvement and I thought Twilight was a flat-out neo-prog classic, with a spooky atmosphere which really helped add extra space.

Then, however, lineup changes meant that Planet Junkie ended up feeling like three different EPs rather than a cohesive album, an exercise in the band trying out new vocalists and new musical directions, to the point where it felt like they'd made the album as a by-product of a workshopping process.

Here, however, Forsaken Innocence sees a striking return to form. In some respects, it's a further rebuke to the various line-up experiments on Planet Junkie, because in fact it doesn't actually go with any of the configurations of the group represented on that album - instead, band founder Pat Sanders and his loyal guitarist Mathier Spaeter are joined by an entirely new rhythm section of Jimmy Pallagrosi on drums and neo-prog veteran John Jowitt on bass.

As for vocals, these are handled by John "Jargon" Kosmidis - not one of the vocalists who sort of got a test run on Planet Junkie, but a new member of the band, revealed here as a sort of neo-prog Mike Patton - a deft singer who can adapt his performance to all manner of complex turns and twists. That's important, because this is by some measure the most challenging and musically complex album Drifting Sun have tackled, putting the lie to the idea that neo-prog groups can't get a bit avant with it when they get a yen to.

Is it still neo-prog if you're going complex and avant-garde with your approach? This album may well be the test case. There's a certain emphasis on atmosphere and emotional resonance which I associate with neo-prog acts more than I typically do with the avant-prog scene, a sensibility which feels like it's been carried along by Drifting Sun ever since their early days; the influence of neo-prog acts like IQ and Marillion have always been present in their music and they don't vanish here. And whilst the album does have its complex moments, especialy in the two-part epic title track, these always are integrated with moments which are willing to go for simple emotional directness when it's aesthetically important to do so. Either way, this is a truly compelling offering which further affirms that Drifting Sun's best days may still be ahead of them.