OUT THERE

This album has been compared to No Earthly Connection by some reviewers, and to me this comparison is equally adequate, but because I have the same feeling of an album full of ideas that could evolve into great music, but didn't, for a couple of reasons. First: the arrangements are kind of noisy, the instruments are not clearly defined, so there are many moments when I can't say exactly "guitar is doing this, and there's this keyboard on the background". I just hear a confused mass of sound. No Earthly Connection had this problem too, something I notice even more comparing to the clear and beautiful sound on the King Arthur album. Second: The singer is deplorable. His voice is not appropriated to prog-rock, it's unclean, not very melodic, and his often too acute voice is not pleasant at all. Alive, he sounds Ok on some songs, such as "Journey to the Centre of the Earth", but here he feels free to sing in his own way. Comparatively, on No Earthly Connection, Rick began to play with a new singer, with a hard rock inclination, and though he was reasonably good on the album, alive he spoiled classics such as "King Arthur". Third: There are sections of really poor musical ideas. The vocal melody in "The Mission", for example, is absolutely commonplace. Fourth: The heavy metal inclination is noticeable not only in the vocalist, but in guitars (there are some distortions that really hurt my ear), bass and drums (which sometimes does a steady and strong beat that's a heavy metal's cliché)

So this album is not totally bad, but listening to it is an unpleasant experience to me, because many parts on it hurt my ears, in a sense or another. Two stars without a doubt.