LIFELINE

Phew, this is a hard one! After 'Question Mark' I have this problem telling the albums and their individual songs/passages apart. That's not to say it's bad music, quite the opposite (I'm an unashamed Neal Morse fan), but how good is a batch of albums that are so samey that I can't tell any difference any more?

If taken in context with 'Sola Scriptura', 'Question Mark', and 'One', 'Lifeline' is practically identical to these, no better, no worse. And so it has to receive a slap on the wrist for unoriginality. The word stagnation springs to mind.

But is it fair to judge an album in conjunction with previous output? Possibly. If I didn't know any other of his earlier albums, 'Lifeline' would make me rush out and buy these in bulk, probably with the same end result of bafflement.

The album is made up of individual songs and not a long epic as usual, but there is something weird about this: Quite often I listen to albums where I have the impression that unconnected songs are bridged together to create the illusion of a concept album. This one seems to be exactly the opposite: We seem to have one large epic that has been torn apart by force to create the illusion of individual songs. Possibly a reaction to some critique?

Anyway, I can't really see the point in going into detail for this album, please read the reviews of those other albums, and they will apply here.

Am I going to listen to it repeatedly? Definitely yes. Does it thrill me? Yes, but it's starting to wear (very) thin. Is it as good as his other releases: Another definite Yes. Would I recommend it: Also Yes, but don't expect to be bowled over by anything new.

I won't comment on the lyrics, I never listen to lyrics anyway. I'd rather leave that to the bible bashers (positive and negative). Can't get arsed to get into that.

For the above reasons this album gets between three and five stars, so let's say four stars, but this is still on a pretty generous side.