TORMATO

This is the only YES album that deserves a "one star" review. It is aimless, meandering, and with some downright embarrassing lyrical ideas. Wakeman's keyboard tones on this album are irritating and he and Steve Howe seem to be crawling all over each other to fill every single space before the other one gets there. On several cuts (e.g. "Future Times"), Anderson appears to be shouting just to be heard above the din. Squire's trademark bass tone has been processed into oblivion. "Circus of Heaven" even has a blatant bass mistake that the band didn't care enough to go back and "punch in" to get it right. This album represents the decline of Prog Rock in the face of Punk and Disco and it has all of the hallmarks of what the Punks detested in Prog -- aimless soloing, airy-fairy lyrics, and assorted posturing. After this album, and a couple of other supposed "Prog" albums that shall remain nameless, my "loyalty" shifted to the kind of thing Robert Fripp, Peter Gabriel and Eno were interested in at that time. Talking Heads "Remain in Light," or Robert Fripp's "Exposure" are much more "progessive" (in the real sense of the term) efforts than something like "Tormato" which, at this point, was more-or-less "REgressive" rock. Believe me, I AM a huge YES fan, and a huge Prog fan, despite this review, but a band that took us to the heights of "Close to the Edge" and "Relayer" should be held to a higher standard than others. "On the Silent Wings of Freedom" is a shining YES moment, and "Onward" is a nice ballad, but YES had lost its experimental edge and was really an "MOR" (Middle-of-the-Road) band, by this point. In my mind, they would never recover from this debacle and the subsequent departure of Jon and Rick. Get "The Yes Album," "Fragile," "Close to the Edge," "Topographic Oceans," "Relayer" and "Going for the One." That's the classic sequence. After that, there's the first two albums and the live "YESSONGS" and "YESSHOWS" collections. If you have those, you have all of the important work from YES.