THE ROARING SILENCE

MMEB was brought to my mind by Al Stewart's 'Nostradamus', a song they covered in Somewhere in Afrika, which I heard as a kid. Only lately having found them to be considered as prog I borrowed with curiosity MMEB's most succesful album. Hmm, the singer Chris Thompson has a good rock voice, the sound (in which Mann's keyboards are most crucial) is good. I think this music comes closer to American 70's rock than British prog of the time, and those Springsteen covers are not the only reason to think so.

The prog elements make some songs very enjoyable ('The Road To Babylon' and 'Starbird' - which owes much to Stravinsky's Firebird finale). The bands that come to my mind are ARGENT and AMBROSIA. Maybe Greenslade too. But on the whole this sounds irritatingly American and quite commercial to me. I don't much like the stupidly titled instrumental ('Waiter...') or 'Singing The Dolphin Through', in which the high "dink, dink" keyboard strokes make me almost sick. For the best moments in the album I give 3*.