OLIAS OF SUNHILLOW

As most people here knows, I'm not precisely a Jon Anderson fan, always found his voice extremely acute and with absolutely no technique, to make it worst, the philosophy he expresses in his music (In the rare occasions his lyrics make any sense) is some sort of esoteric oriental and cheesy expression of post Hippie culture, so as anybody must guess, always refused to buy "Olias of Sunhillow", but last week when searching for an album required to make a review, "Olias" was offered extremely cheap (like 2.5 bucks) so having read all the reviews here took the risk.

I must say that paid too much, I believe "Olias of Sunhillow" is the most boring expression of acute shouts and pre New Age music with no coherence or interest according to my taste.

For God's sake, if it was too much listening JON singing in YES despite the excellent backing vocals of Chris Squire, to listen JON ANDERSON making multiple voices and choirs is a claustrophobic and painful experience for me..

I always thought VANGELIS became a New Age artist due to external influence and the status quo of his time, but after listening this album I'm starting to believe JON ANDERSON had a lot to do with this decision, his music sounds almost exactly to the most cheesy VANGELIS albums, without the great talent and skills of the Greek musician.

Honestly was decided to talk about one or two good songs, but I couldn't find a second that redeems the album, It wasn't even possible for me to sleep because I found the vocals so painful to my ears that altered me to the limit.

From the start the extremely boring and absolutely predictable "Ocean Song", made think in YANNI or similar artists and the annoying "To the Runner" convinced me that there was nothing that remotely moved me in this album.

The extremely high synths, predictable percussion, the use of bells, chimes and whatever JON wants to add to make it more "transcendental", makes it unbearable for this reviewer, reaching the lowest point in the track "Flight of the Moorglade" which simply breaks my nerves.

My rating as you may suspect is 1 lonely star, because I can only describe the experience of listening "Olias of Sunhillow" as 44:06 minutes of torture, and a prove that Progressive Rock doesn't mean extremely good, because as in any other genre, we can find good, mediocre and terrible albums.