DOMINION

IQ's latest studio album seems to me to be another concept album meditation on death; they've had past form with this, of course, what with The Wake and Ever following such ideas. (For that matter, the cover art seems to be a wry reference to the bootleg version of Nine In a Pond Is Hear, what with the "opening up something to reveal a sunset inside" motif.) The title seems to exist as counterbalance to one of the song titles, "No Dominion", which seems to be a nod to the much-used quote "Death shall have no dominion" and so on, and there's a strong fatalistic streak to much of the lyrics.

But then again, isn't that same as it ever was? The intro to the epic opening track, The Unknown Door, extracts a radio broadcast of the declaration of World War II, which feels like it's touching on both the use of historic wartime radio announcements on Frequency and the World War I themes of The Seventh House; Dark Matter's Harvest of Souls played on the afterlife theme too. The fact is that IQ do have a set of ideas and motifs they like to loop back to from time to time - especially when Peter Nicholls is on vocals - and they're looping it again this time around.

But restating your ideas can be a good thing: it allows you to refine them, add nuance, proclaim what you still believe all the stronger whilst jettisoning that which no longer rings true. Musically speaking, this feels like a significant advance in IQ's sound, adding a layer of production polish and compositional subtlety over and above their already high standards. Though once The Unknown Door really kicks into high gear there's no doubt they're still square in the neo-prog realm which is their true dominion, they're also playing up to classic prog motifs and retro stylings less than ever.

But this isn't a Nomzamo or Are You Sitting Comfortably situation where they've decided to go more commercial - the song lengths are all wrong for that approach, for one thing - so much as it is a case where they're confident enough in who they are and what their sound is that they can basically do as they wish and it all manages to sound IQ because it's IQ doing it in an IQ fashion; in other words, it's another prog classic, but not because they're following a 1980s neo-prog playbook but because it's IQ doing it, and even if IQ sucker you into thinking they're going to make it straightforward momentarily they soon work in a way to do something fresh with it.

Neil Durant's work on keyboard deserves particular notice here, dialling relying less on flashy complexity (though there's not an absence of that) and more on continuing the "cinematic" spin to things I'd noted he'd added to Resistance. Some moments of this wrangle from his modern electronics the sort of stateliness you associated with old-time church organs, putting me in mind at points of moments in Yes's work like Awaken, and on that note a case can certainly be made that this may be the IQ work where the Genesis influence on their sound is least apparent and the Yes influence comes to the fore like never before.

It might be the biggest update to their sound since Subterranea, and finds them producing something which will simultaneously give rich enjoyment to long-term fans but is less reliant on their classic 1980s sound or nostalgia for prog's golden age than ever before. As far as I'm concerned, prog's new golden age is "whenever Dominion is playing". This may well be down to a commitment to quality control - reportedly, whilst the gang had enough new material to make this one a double album, they took the single album approach with it, letting us have the cream of the crop whilst the rest gets held back for further polish and refinement. If that's so, then there's every reason to have confidence they'll pull off a blinder with the remainder too.

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