? [AKA: QUESTION MARK]

This album is amazing. If you're not familiar with Neal Morse, allow me to educate you. Right. Imagine Dream Theater. Now imagine that instead of a typically whiney and over- accented vocalist (ahem) you have a much more pleasant, almost celestial angelic voice. Keep imagining Dream Theater, now imagine them about 1,000 times more exciting and adventurous. For those of you thinking "what, but dream theater aren't uninventive" well, that's what I thought til I heard this. Basically we have a progressive spiritual journey. Yeah, at first this sounds a bit...well...Christian, but don't let it bother you. It does NOT detract from the musicality at all. This adventure roves throughout many timbres and emotions. It goes from peaceful ballad-like material, to powerful Rush-esque poppy parts which descend into the most perfect keyboard based madness you will witness (often from Dream Theater's only appealing member, Jordan Rudess). But let me talk especially about a certain track. It's called 12, and it is the word 'amazing' personified, and incognito. It starts out with some fairly average tune which slowly devolves into a mysterious piano based solo...which without warning descends into the best three minutes of music on the entire album. And guess who's responsible? Steve Hackett. That's right, the world's international guitarist of mystery plays the best solo he's played since he was with Genesis. A beautiful, soaring, indescribable solo which combines his beautiful power and emotion with a bit of topical shredding. He proves that he is the only man in the world who can shred with emotion. Anyway, enough of my fanboy ravings. Neal Morse is a modern day prog genius and is relatively unmatched in his field. Ignore his relentless spiritual preaching if it bothers you and enjoy his musical prowess.