HOLD YOUR FIRE

1) Yes, it is their most poppy by far. 2) No, guitars have returned on this. 3) GEDDY LEE plays one mean bass, doesn't he? 4) This is kinda-sorta a concept album telling a story about finding peace and enlightenment in the modern age, but it really isn't all that important.

I think this album is actually one of their strongest, but it depends greatly upon how it is that you approach it. If you are coming looking for winding time signatures, virtuosic musical interplay, epics and a marriage of jazz, orchestral, and avant-garde sounds with rock, this will not satisfy you. However, if you want very strongly and competently composed pop rock, this album is rife with great songs. "Force Ten", "Time Stand Still", "Prime Mover", all are very strong songs incorporating big choruses, great instrumental work, some killer guitars, and very strong pop songs.

So why the three-star rating?

It's simple enough; this isn't really prog. It shows their lineage, yes, but this is a pop rock album with prog bits, not a prog rock album with pop bits. In the grander scheme of music, I would peg this as a prog rock album over everything else; what I mean by my previous comments is that while they are present to a degree to make this clearly not just pop, they are not the main focus of the songs or the album as a whole, acting more as color. It's a solid album and worth your money, especially if you like pop, but for most prog fans, it won't be quite right. Three-stars.

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