XXV

A certain maturity can work wonders for prog musicians; it gives the music more gravitas, more coherence, more .. well .. believability. But .. and it's a silicon-enhanced denim-clad 'but' with the word "Angel Knickers" picked out in sequins across its generous width and a bit of thong peaking out the top .. age is only an advantage if it helps drive the music. If you lose confidence and try to second guess who your audience is and what they want to hear, then an aging band is in trouble.

Pallas, on the strength of this album, would seem to be in trouble.

"XXV" clearly wants to be "The Chronicles of Riddick - the rock opera". The world's about to be destroyed by invading 'Alien Messiahs' .. but where's the anguish, the defiance, the fight? The heart? Nowhere, that's where. The old men of Pallas meekly accept their musical fate, culminating in the truly awful track 'Violet Sky'.

I'm not looking forward to the End of the World. If all the clichéd songs are to be believed, you won't be able to move without tripping over virile, middle-aged minstrels shagging their girlfriends. In the case of Pallas, this armageddon-pokery will be actively pursued to a backdrop of burning deserts, rivers running dry, falling cities and violet skies.

Ok, terrible lyrics aren't a crime in themselves. But this song contains some of the weakest rock vocals I've heard in a long time, a slow-motion one-note-at-a-time keyboard solo, and lazy guitar work. Bass and drums lose any plus points on the grounds that they should have talked the rest of the group out of recording this .. this .. insipid blancmange.

'Mr Wolfe' dragged "The Dreams of Men" from mediocrity to greatness. 'Violet Sky' takes "XXV" down from meh to bleh. I didn't want to write a diatribe .. I wanted to praise emergent maturity. Perhaps I'm not the intended audience. Maybe this album is for 14 year-old boys with terminal priapism, who think metal machine horses with dislocated shoulders (see album cover) are cool, and elderly gentlemen planning apocalyptic shags are the zenith of hip. But somehow I doubt it.

2 stars for the music. An extra star for including a dvd for just £8.99. Minus 2 stars for 'Violet Sky' (yes, it really is that bad). A bonus star for the video close-up of the keyboard solo in that track. Hilarious.