THE KING

My favourite Life Line Project album: true 70's style symphonic rock with long instrumental passages, filled to the brim with beautiful themes, tempo changes and nostalgic keyboard sounds. Several woodwind instruments embellish the grand eloquent LLP sound.

The album starts with 4 shorter compositions of which I particularly liked the fantastic dynamic "Opening" and the more introverted "Dusk" which put you right back in the mid-seventies.

Title piece "The King" is almost 38 minutes long and tells us the dramatic and tragic events of a madman who wants bo be king and doesn't hesitate to abuse democracy and religion to reach his purposes. In the end he is killed without honour and all has been in vain. The music follows perfectly all stages of the rise and fall of the king, there is the dreamy landscape theme, the majestic main theme, reflecting the king, the gospel-like "The Chosen Ones" describing how religion can be used to mobilize a crowd to fight and a village party, full of medieval instruments with flutes, lutes, recorders and percussion instruments. Parts with bassoon, oboe, clarinet and flute are alternated with the densely arranged symphonic parts with solid keyboard parts and beautiful melodic guitar solos.

My favourite is "Doom", a fantastic & dramatic instrumental part, that sounds aggressive and sad at the same time. The album ends in quietness with the beautiful landscape theme.

PP (Patty)