FREQUENCY

Starting the discovery of a band from the last album may not be a good idea, but this is the first that I have found and I have to say that the first things that I have noticed are the very good melodies and the excellent voice of Peter Nicholls. The album starts with the announcement of the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima....a military base...There's a bit of early Marillion in the arrangements. I've been a fan in the Fish's times but I have to recognize that IQ are really better. Maybe they are more mature on this album released in 2009 than Rothery & co in the early 80s, but the songs in this album are stronger and of course more original. Nicholls doesn't try to sing like Peter Gabriel as Fish was doing and they don't write two-chords songs with just odd signatures that's something to which Marillion indulged some times. "Frequency", the title track is quite a masterpiece of neo-prog (and not only). In a period of my life in which I'm listening to more unstructured things this is one of the few melodic albums which I listen to repetitively. The piano intro of "Life Support" is great and introduces another fantastic song. Nicholls has a clean and powerful voice that walks well on the square waves of the piano and keyboard carpet.

The only defect of this album is that the best things are at the beginning, so even if the overall quality is very good throughout all the album it looses something on the way. The most melodic moments, like "One Fatal Mistake" and the long "The Province" are better than the uptime songs like Ryker Skies.

In few words this is an album good for every taste, also mainstream, without being commercial. I'm curious to listen to the previous releases of this band, but I'm wondering where was I when this band, contemporary to Marillion, was releasing albums of this kind? How can I have missed them for so long? From an old Marillion fan, they appear to be better, at least in this album.