FORSAKEN INNOCENCE

When I first saw "Forsaken Innocence" on top of the charts for this year, I didn't really think too much of it - Drifting Sun was a band name I had somewhat vaguely heard of and I figured it would be another one of those albums that jumps up at the start and then falls back down as it gets more ratings. I'll be honest, I was fairly surprised to see it maintain its position for so long, so I decided to listen to it.

For a band that I had always imagined was a pretty run-of-the-mill modern neo-prog band, and knowing PA's penchant for overrating recent neo-prog material, I actually found the album fairly enjoyable. It's not without its flaws - the lyrics are a little dull, and a fair amount of the songwriting in the actual song forms (i.e. verse-chorus sections, as opposed to more through-composed middle sections) is pretty basic. That being said, the musicianship is excellent, and most of the aforementioned more composition-heavy sections are very solid, much more so than a lot of the neo-prog that has come out in recent years (e.g. Virtual Human by Orion 2.0, Love Over Fear by Pendragon, S/T by Mark Kelly's Marathon, etc.).

The only major criticism I really have is the choice of organ tone used throughout the album; its very low quality and sticks out as quite a sore thumb, and I would have to say it's a fairly poor choice.

Other than that, I was pleasantly surprised by the album - my highlight tracks would probably be "King of the Country", "Dementium", and "Forsaken Innocence, Pt. 2". I'd say it's probably a 3.5 star album, but I'm gonna bring that down to a 3 as I hardly think it's a top 10 album from this year.