THE SEVENTH HOUSE

Martin Orford may not like the neo-prog tag but the truth is, if you should explain to somebody what neo-prog is there are not much better ways that putting on this CD. IQ are as close to the paradigm of neo-prog as one can be, and this album is a really fine one in their discography.

A very solid and consistently good album from start to finish, it does not have any really weak moments or flaws. Why then only 3 stars? Well, the problem is a frequent one between IQ and me: as much as I can not find any weak moments, I can not find any really memorable music either. It's as if the music is constantly hovering around the level of 7 - 7,5 over 10, never getting below this but never getting higher either. It's not easy to really identify the reason, maybe the lack of virtuosism, the absence of really interesting ideas in their choices of chord progressions, scales, keys and dynamics, the lack of sympohic moments, I don't know. It's as if the guys were not ambitious enough.

This consistency makes it hard to talk about individual tracks, none is really bad but none does really stand out, although if I should choose I would select "The wrong side of weird", the title track and "Guiding Light" as the best picks.

Personally I can not understand how this album has got 41% of the reviews with 5 stars. To me it's a good album which can be listened to with moderate pleasure, an album fitting perfectly with the description for 3 stars: Good, but far from essential.