DARK MATTER

In my review of Ever I mentioned that even though I'm adept in neo somehow IQ has never been and will never be really my band. And actually this album is an example why. Because Ever was an album with a great and a few good tracks and baerly got 4 stars because of that, these tracks are lacking on this album.

Still this is their most significant album to date looking at the number of ratings on our site and it also reaches a high average and in fact I can also understand that in a way. My not being impressed I do recognize as something personal and I'm not claiming to be the expert telling the truth here. Why is it not too great for me ? I already mentioned there are no highlights for me and that's also the most important reason. But I think I will have some more explaining to do because there are a few epics on this album amongs which the very long Harvest of Souls. And in fact with this epic there lies the problem. The three shorter songs are forgettable for me, I rarely like IQ's short songs and here it's no exeption. In a minute I will go into the other (shorter) epic but now first Harvest. The track starts with some slow singing by Peter Nicholl accompanied by a.o. acoustic guitar. After a few minutes the electric guitar and organ like keyboards join the execution. After 6 1/2 minutes an instrumental part but not long only a bit impressive. Rest of the song vocal and instrumental parts take turns but the song never reaches the high level so many other long epics do. Like I said, it's just my personal feeling and opinion about it but I can't get carried away by a song that should have been (a lot) better imo. The smaller epic Sacred Sound is better for me but can't cause a high rating for this album by me.

Not really bad in the end, I don't want to exxagerate here but it just doesn't touch or grasp me at all in any way. Mediocre effort by IQ for my taste.