DO THEY HURT?

Sometimes titles can tell you a lot. I'm sure, given the turbuilent shifting landscape of the music biz when this album was cut, the guys in Brand-X must've been feeling some pain. Not wanting to throw away everything that made them unique, they gave it one last try. The results, mostly good actually, a bit more even than "Product" but not quite at the level of "Moroccan Roll" or "Masques" either. They open with the alternately frantic and robotically grooving "Noddy Goes to Sweden". "Voidarama" is a nicely constructed melodic and funky fusion tune with Phil Collins actually playing some good stuff (amazing considering how much his drumming was dumbing down exponentially by this point). "Act of Will" was completely uncalled for, a very bad rock/pop tune with a completely unintelligible vocoderized vocal by John Goodsall. However, the remaining tracks try their darndest to make you forget about that aberration. "The Mahavishnu Orchestra influenced "Cambodia" and "Triumphant Limp" do this most successfully. Definitely worth having for these gems, just skip "Act of Will" altogether.