THE MASQUERADE OVERTURE

Here I go, right into the one everyone loves. Over the past three albums, Pendragon have shown significant improvements, developing their sound and finally expanding it into a world of magic and myth that real prog demands, especially if you're going to call Genesis an influence. But I'm also a nonconformist, have plenty of outsider opinions of "best albums" by certain acts, and am prepared for a downgrade as well.

So the title track, awkwardly enough, is a bombastic classical piece with plenty of choral singing. Lasting three minutes, it wasn't an amazing piece, but I'm not going to criticize it very much as it IS an intro, after all. The real magic starts with As Good As Gold. The deep-rooted vocal synths and glitter come waltzing right in, thankfully. This is the shortest of the epics, so I decided quickly that it had better set a good standard. Introducing the fully magical experience of Pendragon with a more simple but still catchy melody is the perfect way to go. I imagine many people introduced themselves to Pendragon through this album. This song delivers all the sparkle, the organs, the synths and the absurdities that, I've mentioned before, real prog demands. All of this told me that Pendragon knew who they wanted to be on the last album, which is fine by me. But they still have room for improvement.

But once Paintbox came on, I realized something. This album seems to show the band balancing out the instruments and the effects much more often, creating a dense experience that never detracts from the classical mysticism. This also means the last two tracks are quite a bit the same, making me worry about the diversity factor that made the previous album so good. So I was practically demanding the band to do something different after the midtro, The Pursuit of Excellence. But for the most part, it maintained a constant in the great quality of the music and the general sound. That effectively means that this is Pendragon's Physical it. It determines a specific sound for the band, as Zep frontman Robert Plant said Physical Graffiti did, but this also means the diversity factor that made. In fact, as far as the quality goes, every epic is certainly worth checking out, but it didn't really do anything that "amazed" me until the second half of Guardian of My Soul, the fifth track.

Now here comes the clincher. There are some serious improvements and a couple of valid criticisms for this album, so the big question is... is this better than The Window of Life?

When I wrote my review for The Window of Life, I wrote down that I'd say it was a better album than another neo-prog album I recently heard (for the second time): Dark Matter by IQ, and I would say the same about this. It has much more density to it and just as much personality as The Window of Life, and it's great that they fully developed a sound that works for them. It's PERFECTLY developed, and the fact that they largely justified it with high quality songs makes it more impressive. But... there are no songs I'd give five stars to on this one. I gave at least three to The Window of Life, and criticized it for its last two tracks. So, at the end of the day, I have to go with the album with a couple of their best songs. This album, to me, is in the same league as the last one, but not QUITE on the same LEVEL. Both are 92/100, worthy of the five-star tag here, but only one of them is getting the top slot.

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