LIGHT OF DAY, DAY OF DARKNESS

I realize a lot of people give extra high ratings to concept albums, especially single song concept albums. Most of the time it is totally undeserved. However, this album really is interesting. I was very skeptical because with the exception of Jethro Tull's Thick as a Brick, most of these projects fall woefully short of a 5 star rating.

In all honesty, so does this recording. It isn't an "absolute, must have or your life will be unfullfilled" kind of recording. However, it is better than most skeptics like myself would have thought. Even my "metal-phobic" friends and co-workers enjoyed this effort. It's got enough metal to have a bite when needed and enough prog to draw you into their world. I've only listened to the album 7 times since buying it a couple weeks ago, so I'm not too deeply involved into the lyrics and story. Then again, I rarely pay attention to lyrics unless they are audaciously bad.

I'm not going to go into minute by minute detail other than to say as others have said that the female vocalist's solo in the middle of the song is not only bad, but it is also out of place and ill-fitting the rest of the music. Personally, I ripped this into a sound editor, removed that section, and reassembled the track. That alone puts it in the 4.5 star category. All in all, this is well worth the $12 investment and will definitely provide a lot of musical enjoyment in the years to come.