V

The perfect Spock's Beard album! Or rather, the grand marriage between the band's compositional intricacies and the delightfully joyful and accessible songwriting, production, and arrangements, this is in a word the band's fifth studio release properly titled 'V', the true masterwork in the band's discography and the album that is deservedly often seen as the strongest, most innovative and most daringly adventurous album of the Beard. After a successful exploration of a variety of sounds and ways of writing music over the course of their first four studio albums, SB were finally ready for a grandiose piece of work that combines the experience and expertise of all band members, as the final result is a tremendous prog rock opus that is so pristinely executed and so carefully conceived, a work of great inspiration that sounds as good still to that day.

Opening up the album is the great epic 'At the End of the Day', a melodramatic and symphonic piece that sweeps through passages of orchestrated bliss, to parts that approach the heavier end of the rock spectrum, to some purely experimental and fusion-oriented jabs, a tremendous way to set a tone for an album that is above all, celebratory, expansive, engaging and at times challenging enough to keep you intrigued. Another hard-hitting and suspenseful track follows in the face of 'Revelation', which is followed by the second part of the cross-album suite titled 'Thoughts'. This entry is much more unhinged and aggressive than the first part, of course, with very proggy instrumentation and gorgeous vocal harmonies. The accessible sound of 'All on a Sunday' is a lovely nod at 'Day for Night' or even parts of 'The Kindness of Strangers', while 'Goodbye to Yesterday' is a beautiful and more acoustic piece. Closing off this perfect album is the grand 27-minute autobiographical epic of Neal Morse - 'The Great Nothing', an intricate and delightfully symphonic piece that perhaps surprisingly, stays away from the overall heavier sounds of 'V' and presents the earlier symphonic sound of Spock's Beard in a very coherent and accessible manner. The entire album is gorgeous, although the listener should expect to hear a slightly more unhinged side of the band, full of incredible music and thoughtful lyrics, 'V' is framed in masterful arrangements.