SHATTERED IMAGE

Ok, initially I wanted to do my usual song by song review for this album but after having listened to it one more time I decided against it. And the reason is that the songs on the album are too much of the same, at least most of them.

In fact there are only 4 songs out of eleven that are out of the more or less common Tulip Noire style. And this style is vocal songs of appr. 6-7 minutes average with some instrumental contribution in the middle section of the songs. So then a song by song review would become repititive and boring. All these seven songs are rated somewhere between 3 and 3.5 stars by me. Meaning all songs are good but nothing excellent with these.

Three other songs are instrumentals, all named Images which refer to the album title no doubt. These instrumental tunes are all very nice, one general, one with mainly keys and one with dominant guitar. Also these have an average of about 3,25*.

This means the rating for this album is settled and will indeed be three stars for me. But I cannot forget about one extremely honourable mentioning here: the only track of masterpiece status and if I'm not mistaking the only one in their carreer of this huge level: The Haze. In know this song for almost 5 years now thanks to PA's stream. I fell in love with it immediately and love it still to the bone. Especiallly the mindblowing second half of the song makes me go into raptures every time I hear it. What the level of greatness is ? Well, to me it can compete with Big Puzzle's (TFK) instrumental part same as with Cinema Show and Firth of Fifth. Yes, indeed: it's that fantastic ! So everyone that hasn't heard it yet: go have a listen to PA's stream song !

Anyway, however magnificent it is, it's not enough to raise the rating. And I'm also a bit frustrated that if a band has the potential to create something this wonderful, why can they only do this once ? I challenge them to do it more often. However, three stars for Shattered Image.