OCEAN

If there's any Eloy's album which deserves the attribute of masterpiece it's this one. The Uriah Heep influence has been superseded by an original sound, with some Folydian influences, but not so strong as in Power and the Passion.

The album contains only 4 long tracks and should be a concept one, even if I never investigated it.

"Poseidon's Creation" contains all the things that make a song be called "progressive". Long instrumental parts, keyboards, guitar riffs...only Bornemann's voice is unfortunately the same as ever with that strong German accent. I don't know why he didn't sing in German instead of English. It was probably for 'commercial' reasons, but German would have been best fitting with Bornemann's voice. Regardless this fact, that's common in all the Eloy's discography, this is an excellent song with several sections. The keyboards part after the singing has something of Genesis and of Wakeman at the same time, followed by a very good guitar piece that even giving me a sensation of "already-known" can't be related to any specific prog dynosaur. The coda is quite psychedelic thanks to the repetitiveness of the guitar's part.

"Incarnation of the Logos" makes clear that we are speaking of ancient Greece. Poseidon in the first track and Atlantis in the last identify our story in 10.000BC, when Plato put's the disappearence of Atlantis. The song is slow and keyboard-based. Did Porcupine Tree know this song when they have written Radioactive Toy? The instrumental part in the middle of the song is one of the best ever created by this band.

Bass opens "Decay of the Logos". There's just a bit of krautrock flavour because of the repetitive bass line (almost performed by keyboards) of the initial part. This is a complex song in the sung parts with uptime tempo and odd signatures. It's about a decay, so it introduces the fall of Atlantis which is going to come at June 5th - 8498, 13 p.m. Gregorian Earthtime.

"And so the Gods decided ...." well without written lyrics I'm unable to understand what Bornemann says with his accent, but I think the message is clear. Deadly bells, background screams, winds and a narrator for the storm to start. 3 minutes of dark psychedelia than the organ plays minor chords like in a requiem on which the narrator says something. It goes on dark and slowly for the first half of the track, until the bass enters. Now Bornemann sings. If I have to think to an example of "a progressive song" this is a good one. There's something theathrical in the nubers cried by Bornemann at the end of the singing part. Now the bass is hypnotic while the keyboards make an excellent work. This can be defined an epic, maybe the first real epic in the Eloy's discography. Probably a bit dated in the sounds, but good music never dies, isn't it so? It's at minute 13 that the catastrophe of the title happens. This song is about the Atlantis Agony, not its death, so don't expect explosions or similar. the music flows dark and dramatic without any excess. The coda sounds like deadly bells again. Unfortunately it fades out, a production choice that I never like and it seems to be completely unneeded at this point.

Even with some defects this is probably the fundamental album of this band and I don't want to decrease its overall rating so I will round up to 5 the 4.5 stars that I think it really deserves.