SNOW

"Snow" could have been the Spock's Beard's masterpiece... But it sadly isn't!

Primarily because a mediocre second album, clearly under the level of the magnificient first one... The style of "Snow" remembers me a bit to "Day for Night", but surpassing it clearly. The short tracks of the first half of the album are just great. Stranger in a Strange Land, Long Time Suffering, Devil's Got My Throat, Open Wide the Flood Gates, Wind at My Back... All the tracks of the first Cd are some of the best Spock's Beard's Neal Morse best. And they fit and flow together perfectly, like one simple song.

But then comes the sencond half... With a lot of fillers, and repeating too much from the first. Specially songs like I'm the Guy, 4th of July, Reflection... They bring to my mind the weakest moments of "Day for Night". Even great songs like Freak Boy and I will Go can't change the bad feeling I have every time I hear this second Cd of "Snow", because it spoils a bit the great work made of the perfect first one. A pity.

Best Tracks: the songs of the first Cd are all great... The second one has too much fillers.

Conclusion: this is another example of an album spoiled by its excesive duration... It the band had taken the best parts of the second Cd and they had mixed in the first one for telling the whole story (wich reminds me too much to the film "Powder"...), maybe we could be talking about the definitive Spock's Beard album. But sadly, "Snow" is not the Spock's Beard masterpiece that we could hever hear from them, and of course is not their best album, although it has some incredible songs and the band sounds really cohesionated. After this album, and Neal Morse's departure, the things would never be the same.

Cd1 rating: *****. Cd2 rating: ***

My rating: ****