ROMANTIC WARRIOR

I'm not at all an expert on Jazz-Rock/Fusion and I haven't (yet) heard very much that I like from this genre. But I immediately liked Romantic Warrior. The keyboards, the guitars, the drums and the basses are all played with enormous skill and urgency. The music is very complex yet somehow melodic and accessible. There is feeling in the playing and it is not just technical for the sake of it.

The problem I usually have with Jazz-Rock/Fusion music is that it leans too close to Jazz and contains too little Rock influences. Romantic Warrior is true Fusion in the sense that it is not just regular Jazz played with rock instruments. Still, there are many passages here that are close to Jazz. But there is just enough Rock to keep it interesting throughout for me.

The best tracks are the first and the last one. The Medieval Overture sounds a bit like an alarm bell at the beginning and I have indeed been using it as such for a couple of weeks now! So I wake up every morning to the sound of Romantic Warrior. There is no hurry to push the snooze button!

Romantic Warrior is a great album title and it has a great cover art too, and the music! Probably the best Jazz-Rock/Fusion album of all time and also one of the best all instrumental albums of any category. A great introduction for the Prog fan to Jazz-Rock/Fusion, I think.

Recommended!