SONG OF THE MARCHING CHILDREN

If you like dynamics in your prog, this is a place to turn. Storm and Thunder is a great example of this, beginning with a heavy organ intro, then softly floating just above dead quiet with mellotron and organ developing the melodic theme, and then crashing into the theme with mellotron exploding through your speakers, drums and bass pounding, and Jerney Kaagman wailing beautifully on top of it all. The guitar solo is perfect, simply playing the melody, which is so strong that it's really all that is required. This is in contrast to some of Chris Koerts' other guitar soloing, which I sometimes find to be really overdone and out of place ( Wild and Exciting from the debut comes to mind), but perhaps the success of Jan Akkerman was something that many other Dutch players felt they had to compete with during this period?

The downside of this album in the modern digital age is that every version of this on CD has absolutely sucked. Do yourself a favor and track down the vinyl. It can still be had for a decent price, and really sounds great. Early versions of this on CD had so much treble that the drums sounded like metal in spots, and the more recent attempt to remaster this was a dismal failure, as it was drenched in digital noise reduction, really sucking the life out of the original recording. Scoring an early pressing of this on vinyl was a sonic revelation for me!

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