ONE SMALL STEP...

As a big fan of Guy, I have to say that my initial impression of this new album is disappointment. It is nothing to do with the musicianship but I find that the epic is not quite at the level of his previous ones and, for the first time, find that some of the songs are a bit too much for Guy's voice. He is much better, IMHO, at songs which are less powerful but when he needs to inject some power his limitations are clearly evident. It would be nice if he, once in a while, allowed a guest singer to sing on his albums as a whole album of his voice can be a bit wearing. I even, heaven forbid, skipped one or two songs as the voice grated - for the very first time - but that was down to him trying to sing powerfully rather keep within the limitations of his voice. I can deal with his vocals in the same way as Dave Cousins or Nick Barrett where you get used to a certain style within the music.

Overall, this is not as good as Cure or View from my Window. It is still a very good album with some wonderful songs, just not consistent as his other albums in terms of song quality and variation. However, any Manning fan should have this in their collection even though, vocally, this appears to my ears to be as challenging as the musical direction he has taken with this album. One final point is that I find that this album is heavily song based, clearly less progressive than before and very few real instrumental passages of note.