WAR AND PEACE & OTHER SHORT STORIES

As vulpino stated, this is the first time i have ever written a review and felt compelled to after seeing some of the low star ratings for this CD. Which in my opinion is a Progressive Rock Gem and one that should be in everybody's Progressive Rock album collection.

Sean Filkins has created a fantastic album that covers many genres with a mixture of vast Symphonic pieces, world and folk music and out and out Heavy Rock, and with the help of some excellent musicians from Prog world (Dave Meros, John Mitchell, Lee Abraham, Darren Newitt), he has managed to put all these ideas together tp create six pieces of music that really make you sit up and listen. From the quirky "Are you sittting comfortably" tp start, which leads into the energetic English Eccentric, Filkins sends us on a spiralling musical journey, producing many musical highs, as in the ever expanding choruses of Prisoner Of Conscience The Soldier, to the instrumental finale of Epitaph.

The lyrics are also very meaningful, very poetic at times and help create the picture the Filkins describes. " A sardonic toast to the victims of the funeral pyre. The costly toll of love and life exchanged for blood and fire". All the lyrics are in the excellent booklet (created by Paul Tippet, artwork for It Bites amonst others) that has been produced with the CD and I found myselfreading them even when the CD had finished. This is one of those albums that deserves repeated listening from start to finish and the I listen the more I hear, as production from Lee Abraham and Filkins is top notch. This is without a doubt my album of 2011. Filkins has made a very bold statement for his first solo effort and I look forward to more from him in the following years to come. Awesome Stuff