ROAD ISLAND

After two great albums which showed their progressive leaning fused with memorable melodies, the band went for a much simpler and sticky kind of songs in their next two albums, which you should avoid with all costs. despite their great success and good sales ambrosia released their last album in 1982 which saw them returning to a more interesting style i wouldn't go far and call it progressive rock but definitely not your regular sticky rock songs , but much more well written songs ,with great energies.

One thing i will give ambrosia is the fact that they could always write beautiful melodies and this one is no different. what you'll hear in the first listen is that this album is rockier than ever , even rockier than their debut. they unleashed this raw sound , with distorted guitars top that with their always fine vocals and you have a great set of songs.

The album starts with my favourite song on the album , the rockiest of them all ,great pounding drums , killer riff , beautiful vocals , and of course the solo , how great is this one hiting all the right notes , like i said hats off!!! the momentum is not wasted and there goes another rocky tune with great guitar riff beautiful vocals and again totally amazing guitar solo , i never heard dave pack like this before, it seems like he really missed this, what a great drive!! the album keeps up being interesting and you can find some more great moments like "kid no more" out of the blew xylophone solo , or "ice age" which is pretty progressive clocking at 7 minutes. deffinitely a good song!! "endings" starts like another AOR song , beautiful but AORish, after a minute and half it changes and the beauty increased going to a more touchy melody followed with great emotional guitar solo, one of the better songs by ambrosia. of course they can't go without some more kind of AORish songs , you got "feelin' alive again" and "fool like me" which are AOR but they are not bad songs like you heard on previous albums , i like to hear them with the rest of the album.

In conclusion i wouldn't recommend it for new comers , but deffinitely for you that already like their debut. another thing is the muddy sounding album not at all like their first two with alan parsons , this is a real downfall i'm not sure why , they already had their success , weird. a remaster is terribly needed!! if this were in a symphonic prog genre i would give it about 2.5 stars, but it is not!! it is a prog related genre , where it should so i'm only proud to give it a solid 4 stars. great ending to their career. with a great album!!

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