MONOLITH

Kansas seemed poised to continue their sweeping advance as one of the genre's most established and recognisable bands with their original combination of progressive rock and AOR-spiced hard rock, following their mega-successful "Leftoverture" and "Point of Know Return".

And when the image of a haughty Native American looming over the horizon on the cover of "Monolith" (1979), their sixth album, saw the light of day, it seemed like the harbinger of a work with vindicatory and conceptual themes, considering that pieces like "Song for America" and "Cheyenne Anthem" had already reflected with great sensitivity and respect for the land and for the displaced indigenous people.

But as "Monolith" goes on, those references don't appear, but instead high doses of harmonic and digestible hard rock in a constant search for self-knowledge, with songs marked mainly by the riffs and guitar solos of the duo Rich Williams/ Kerry Livgren and the secondary contribution of Robby Steinhard's violins, as in the opening "On the Other Side" or in the energetic "How My Soul Cries Out for You" (with its inexplicable pause in the middle), "A Glimpse of Home" and "Stay Out of Trouble" and, on the other hand, with the disconcerting inclusion of "People of the South Wind", a disco rhythm that not even Williams' great guitar solo saves from the bonfire.

And of progressive elements, not much. Maybe some reminiscences in the introductions and intermediate keyboard and violin developments of "Angels Have Fallen" and "Away from You", the best of the album. Too little for so much expectation in my opinion.

The melodic and acoustic "Reason to Be" ends "Monolith", a correct album, but not progressive rock or anything like it, but a more accessible and direct warm hard rock, the path that Kansas would begin to walk very close to the beginning of the eighties.

2.5/3 stars