PIECES OF EIGHT

How Styx, in the span of a year, manage to go from creating an epic, prog album of The Grand Illusion's caliber, to creating the bland, arena rock of Pieces Of Eight boggles me. Their musical aesthetic changes so much between the two albums that, it not for the individual member's distinctness, the albums would appear to have been made by two different bands. The two most destructive changes to the band being: the removal of the keyboard as a lead instrument and the change in vocal harmonies from Queen-esque to Van Halen-esque.

From a strictly non-prog standpoint, the album still fails to entertain. Of course the album produced the beloved anthem "Renegade" , but outside of that there's nothing really spectacular to write about. The entire album is guitar driven with little focus on other instrumentation, and the whole thing is very commercial. This is a rare instance where I feel half star rating is needed. This one's a 2.5 in reality.