A CHANGE OF SEASONS

Very fine EP that includes only ONE original new song, but what a song! A 23 minute epic that was recorded around the time of their Images And Words CD. A Change Of Seasons is up to the very high standard of that album and it´s worth the price of the EP alone. The group was very, very inspired at the time indeed. This is a classic prog song that everyone should hear: lots of tempo changes and shifting moods, great guitar and keyboards lines, an interesting lyric and a great perfomance by the band as a whole, even though Kevin Moore had left the band at the time. Derek Shenionian does a fine job for a starter!

The rest of the CD is a live recording on which the group decided to do some covers of people who had influenced them. It starts with a nagnificent rendition of Elton John´s opus Funeral For A Friend/Love Lies Bleeding (the very only song you may call to have any progressive leaning in the entire John´s cathalog). It follows with Perfect Strangers, done so faithfully you sometimes believe not even Deep Purple could do it so smoothly live. Then we have the down side, at least in my opinion: two meddleys. I really don´t like these kind of things. It would be better if they chose a whole song from each band. But still they do quite good renditions of Led Zeppelin, playing some not so obvious hits. The last meddley is the weakest, like the band was already tired and just wanted to get over with it as soon as possible. Nevertheless, I also should point their technique is amazing and the playing is faultless. Besides, at 57:36 is quite a lot of music for an EP.

All in all a very good release that I think started to show people that those guys are something special. They could play cover versions and made a career out of it. They´d eventually record whole albums that way (The Dark Side Of The Moon, Master Of Puppets, etc) but A Chenge Of Seasons was the first. And it was already quite impressive. Four solid stars. If you enjoy Images And Words then this is a must have. If you haven´t, give it a try. Highly recommended