SANTANA 3

Santana certainly had great album covers these years. This psychedelic piece of art is a bit misleading however: this is no psychedelic spacerock, but just latin-rock with lot's of guitar and keyboardsolo's. Not so different then the previous two records. After two greatly succesfull albums this record is a small step back, especially in songwriting. The musicians play with full enthousiasm as usual accompanied by the latin percussion what was the trademark of Santana.

This record has also a few numbers that sound like latin party music. This is a bit of a backdraw from the progressive point of view. There ain't a specific brilliant song on this record, but troughout the record most of the instrumental pieces are quiet nice. Carlos Santana shows both his subtle and slow guitarhandling as his fast and amazing qualities. In my opinion some of the songs (Toussaint L'overture for example) do sound better on the Moonflower liverecord however and therefor this record is only advised for the fans of Santana. For progrockers in general this is a good record, but not so essential.