EVERY GOOD BOY DESERVES FAVOUR

All right...before I get started in earnest with this review, I'd better go ahead and state that this is a prog-metaller's review of the MOODY BLUES...so consider that as you read, even though I see my assessment is lining up with the majority of those here. There was probably a time when I would've given 4 stars to this album along with Days of Future Passed, but when I re-listened in preparation for this review, I realized there was simply no way I could possibly contemplate it. I don't think I can award any lower, though, because this is probably one of their better albums that I've heard.

I've seen a lot of people trashing the opening track, "Procession", and I'm not going to join in on that. I actually think it was one of the better ideas they had, helped out by a new toy--a Moog synthesizer. The transitions through the different forms of music were quite fluid, including a half-tone pitch bend going from the a cappella chanting into the Asian/Arabic-styled music. The poetry from this part, while it doesn't seem like very much here, reprises very nicely on the album's strongest song, "One More Time to Live", where it's fleshed out and really goes a long way towards capturing the grandeur of history's cycles. There was another song that I greatly enjoy that I imagine will surprise people coming from me: "Our Guessing Game". Yes, it's sappy as RAY THOMAS' works tend to be, but I really find myself admiring the man's Broadway-trained voice that sounds rather shockingly like a ROGER WATERS who knows how to sing on key.

Some of the other songs, such as "The Story In Your Eyes", "After You Came", and "You Can Never Go Home" are mediocre but acceptable rockers...that is, if you're interested in early 70s pop. This has always been a problem with the MOODY BLUES but is particularly glaring here. I must also add here that I cannot stand HAYWARD's guitar tone on "After You Came" especially--it sounds far too country-and-western or folksy, and that's one of the few genres of music I have never been able to get used to or find anything likeable about. A few songs on this album were completely and utterly disposable: "Emily's Song" and to some extent (and I hate to say this given my like for THOMAS' work) "Nice To Be Here". Both of these were, to put it bluntly, vomitously sweet, most especially "Emily's Song". I find myself needing to throw on some PINK FLOYD or OPETH or something to clean my brain out after this one. Unfortunately, I think it was numbers like this that predict where the band will end up on their last, utterly miserable excuse for an album Strange Times.

While the production had improved from Threshold, I still had problems with some of the antiquated sounds. I've heard good uses of the Mellotron on other albums such as by PINK FLOYD and RUSH, but trying to put it this far in the foreground simply doesn't work at all, and it showed on "Nice to Be Here" (where the Mellotron horns sounded like a bad mariachi band) and especially on "My Song" (an attempt to replicate an entire orchestra). For those who have found SYMPHONY X's work in the 1990s to try to replicate an orchestra cringeworthy, hearing this will very much put it into perspective. The technology simply did not exist back then to do what they had in mind without a live orchestra, and I would've thought the MOODIES would use better judgment about it...another Days of Future Passed simply was not going to happen, no matter how much they forced it.