WELCOME TO THE PLANET

A SOLID four stars. Very impressive. This album is a cut above their more recent albums, which were pretty darn good to begin with! Greg Spawton is back, writing or contributing to a majority of the forty-seven minutes (you may remember he was the major contributor on the watershed album Underfall Yard). My favorites are Lanterna, A Room with No Ceiling, Proper Jack Froster, Bats in the Belfry, and Oak and Stone. These songs are all among the best pieces ever written by BBT. All fans are shocked at the death of David Longdon. At a risk of sounding insensitive, I want to say that the group will survive. The tough part will be replacing Longdon's unique voice, which almost guarantees the group will survive in very good yet different form, since Longdon was not a major songwriter.