THE UNQUIET SKY

Arena has gotten lazy, selling us English Victorian fantasies (hence the talk of bishops and the parchments) all over again. I've heard this album described as a return to form after the relatively simplified Seventh Degree of Separation, but neither Degree was that bad nor the new one is that good. I view them both as continuing on the largely similar path - vocal-dominated plodding gothic hard rock with that typical Arena production that sounds as if crashing down on your ears unquietly from the sky. But whereas Seventh Degree had several hit-sounding tracks on it, memorable hooks or surprising passages are simply missing on Unquiet Sky. It's just a big lump of hard rock with loud synths.