THE WINDOW OF LIFE

So I decided to do the reviewing of three essential Pendragon albums in a very short time because these three are related in my opinion. And not just in mine, many people believe that the three albums after The World were more or less like The World. I must say I can only partly agree with this. Where the general style is concerned this statement might be correct but to call this album The World part II and Masquerade Overture The World part III, added with: nothing new under the sun is really rediculous to me. I believe all three albums are different enough and I even detect a sort of development in the three albums and then I mean a development in the right direction, Pendragon getting better and better in the end culminating in Not of this World, their magnum opus to me.

But enough about the general story, time to review this album. This album has two different faces to me. There are the longer tracks that are absolutely wonderful to me and the shorter that are hardly more than average imho. The album starts with Walls of Babylon, a track that has a very heavy keyboardpassage that works really nice to me. The rest of the song is a bit slow but not really annoying in that sense. Next is Ghosts, a track I count in with the shorter tracks, it doesn't do much for me, it's more of an interlude to the next great track, my favourite of the album actually: Breaking the spell. This track shows Nick Barrett at his very very best. What an amazing guitar player this man is. I have seen him playing this song live recently: it's absolutely shivers down the spine. Neo prog at its best ! After this the only real epic of the album: Last man on earth. This my second favourite and also an absolutely fantastic effort by this band. Brillant composition with some tempo changes that make it even more interesting. The last two are less interesting to me though I have to say: Stargazing is a very popular live track (to the rest of the audience).

So it's one of those 50-50 albums but unless my final outcome with The World I am a lot more positiv about this one. If an album contains 3 great tracks I think it's fair to say it deserves at least 4 stars. (4,25)