DARK MATTER

Well, I'm going to disagree with some of the above opinions. Funny how people like the same bands, but often for different reasons. For me, The Seventh House reached the pinnacle of its genre and I'm going to post my review of that. Dark Matter is good prog stuff, for sure, but when I have finished listening to it, I always feel there's something missing, maybe a track too short, clocking in at only 52 minutes, almost half of which is taken up with the Harvest Of Souls. Three of the tracks are at about the 5 minute mark, which to me rate more as "songs" rather than classic "progressive rock"

Sacred Sound, timed at 11:40 is a classic prog start, which I agree will surely be a show opener for a year or two, (although I would still prefer the Wrong Side Of Weird which I feel is stronger), but has a slighly heavy ponderous beat at times, and parts have a slightly dated melotron sound. Red Dust Shadow is a solid guitar-based song but again I can't help comparing it unfavourably to Erosion. You Never Will has a great chorus line but a rather poor lead up for me. Ditto Born Brilliant, which for me has a bit of a plod to the verses, but a decent chorus and a great guitar outro running into a celestial-voices type finish. And so to Harvest Of Souls the magnum opus of this CD; it is certainly strong in parts but for me does seem like a collection of parts at times and does not always hang together too well musically; there are comparables to both their earlier Narrow Margin from Subterranea and the classic Supper's Ready at times, but perhaps that's inevitable in a 20 + minute track. It's good prog stuff, but doesn't quite rank as a classic for me.

In summary, it's a good album, with excellent plaintive Peter Nichols vocals, strong guitar work and keyboards, and if you like the present IQ as anyone looking here hopefully will, then it's a must have, but for me only a 7 or an 8, whereas I rate The Seveth House as a 9. I don't find any tracks quite equalling The Wrong Side Of Weird, Erosion, The Seventh House or the massively powerful and passionate Guiding Light.