THE SEVENTH DEGREE OF SEPARATION

I am an Arena Fan Boy! I became hooked with their first two albums with its early 80s Neo-Prog style sound and during their further development into a more harder, almost metal sounding style I followed faithfully. Their highlight for me remains Contagion. During a live performance I even once had tears in my eyes (something which never happened with any other band I saw live). Now listening to Seventh Degree of Separation I feel tears again. But they are different. This album just leaves me utterly bored to tears! Even as a very forgiving fan I cannot find much good with this Arena output.

The tracks all sound kind of bland. A bored vocalist (unfortunately the brilliant Rob Swoden was replaced) sings without much passion, the keyboards have lost their balls and the guitar is playing along much uninspired (Clive Nolan and John Mitchell can do so much better!). Bass and Drums do their solid work but also leave no big impression.

The album all in all does leave me rather unsatisfied. It's like something is missing. No Arena trademarks to be found here. It's not even the fact that this is not a very proggy record (I love John Payne era Asia!), but rather the lack of any memorable song (Contagion), the lack of drama and passion (the first two albums & Pepper´s Ghoast) and the total lack of atmosphere (The Visitor).

Seventh Degree of Separation: the Arena album one can easily skip! Two star max!