THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS

Following the warm praise of the press and Neo Prog fans worldwide, Shadowland entered the Thin Ice Studios to record their second album.Featuring Tina Riley on backing voices, the whole process would last only about a month, between October and November 93', and the new work would see the light in 1994 on SI Music under the title ''Through the looking glass''.

As Shadowland's style was always quite song-oriented and with generally simplistic structures, noone could expect a massive change in terms of style, however Shadowland seem to have added another dose of accesibility in their sound, which now has plenty of AOR vibrations in the more mellow moments and the catchy choruses.Of course this is nowhere near cheesiness, because Nolan often takes over with some trully bombastic keyboard waves, while his voice is always expressive without any hear-melt orientations.I could say this is closer than ever to (Nolan's future project) ARENA's more edgy and accesible tracks or LANDMARQ's pair of opening albums with lots of interesting guitar solos, powerful synthesizers and well-crafted melodies.Surprisingly the tracks are rather long, but do not expect any particular variations, the extended durations come as a result of a couple of long intros along with the dual keyboard and guitar flashes along the way.Despite its simplicity and lack of trully adventuruous spirit, ''Through the looking glass'' remains a fairly decent album due to its interim, highly atmospheric pomposity, the huge amount of energy and dynamics throughout and the decent sum of good, memorable melodious parts.

Recommended to all fans of well-composed Neo Prog.Passionate music with dramatic segments, carefully executed rhythmic and melodic parts and sufficient vocal performance.