IONA

Iona's debut album is not their best effort. Yes, most of the elements of the Iona sound are already there, but it doesn't manage to hold my attention. About half of "Iona" is instrumental. The instrumentals sound like a mix of generic jazz-rock and Celtic instrumentation. Iona's biggest weakness, their tendency to make atmospheric, mysterious sounding tunes without enough melody or development, is very visible on this album. It sounds a lot like a soundtrack. The vocal tracks are better, especially "The Island", which has a powerful melody and the beautiful inspirational ballad "Here I Stand". The other songs lack good melodies. The best instrumental is the closing "Columcile", which is a quiet tune that is simple, yet beautiful. Of the other instrumentals, "Beijing" is somewhat interesting because of the Chinese musical influences and "Trilogy" contains a few different moods, but is too long. I cannot understand how other people can rate this as a masterpiece of progressive rock. Iona's debut album carries the seeds of the better albums that were yet to come, but is not very interesting in itself. The best tracks are really good, but most of the tracks are pleasant, but slightly boring background music. Their next album, "The Book of Kells", would turn out to be a huge improvement on "Iona".