ESCAPE [AKA: E5C4P3]

'Escape' is a very descriptive title for this album because it was with this album that Journey truly escaped from their past. Whatever progressive tendencies and influences that still was present on Departure is wholly absent here. In that sense, it was with Escape that the band completed the journey that they initiated with Infinity; a journey that took the band from a Jazz-Rock/Fusion group (on the family tree of Santana) to a full on AOR group with big radio hits. Personally, I particularly like the things they did in between these two "extremes", and I think that they hit the perfect balance on Infinity, my favourite Journey album. Evolution was a very weak follow up to Infinity, however, but with Departure Journey regained, at least some, of their former strengths. Say what you want about the Departure album, but you have to admit that that album displayed a somewhat wider range of influences and also a stronger willingness to experiment than does Escape. While on Departure we could hear slight influences from Blues, Folk and even Prog, as well as some quirky details and elaborated vocal harmonies, Escape is a pure AOR, Hard Rock album without any "departures" at all. "Purifying" their sound in this way was a sure path to commercial success, but it made the music quite uninteresting from the perspective of the Prog fan.

I'm not going to comment on each individual track because there is really only one track that deserves special comment; Mother, Father is an excellent song! Great melody, great vocals, great guitar work, even the lyrics are very good. There is perhaps nothing really progressive about the song, but it is the album's longest track and a little more room is left for instrumental passages in this one. I believe that Dream Theater played their own version of this song and I understand why they chose to do so. However, one great song cannot save this album from being an almost total bore.

Escape completed Journey's evolution from Jazz-Rock, via Prog Related, to pure AOR, Hard Rock. One great song is not quite enough for this album to "escape" the lowest rating.

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