STYX

Styx debut is very raw album. Raw in musicianship, and raw in energy as well. Keyboards based hard rock with long compositions and many rocking guitar solos. Melodic songs. No overproduction.

For sure there are too many places where you can see that band is still not experienced enough, and still is searching for it's direction. But even with all this the album sounds fresh and not boring. Possibly there is some nostalgia in my emotions to this album: it sounds as good as many rock albums of that time sounded. Each song has it face, no myriads of faceless and overproduced clones, as in later decades. You can like some songs and hate another, but at least you can identify them. Tell true-how many modern (neo) prog albums or even bands have songs you can identify or even remember after few listenings? Not too much.

Movement of the Common Man (13:11) isn't a successful experiment, but it sounds as early progressive song for sure. You can easily find many elements of hard-rock, blues- rock ,some prog as well in album's songs. And will hardly find polished pop-rock sound of Styx later period.

So, even if far from great ,this album is better choice than Styx albums from 80-s.