PAWN HEARTS

What else can really be said about an album that has an overall positive draw from the Prog community? Not a damn thing. Rather than bore you with a backstory of the cliche "once-hated-but-now-love-unconditionally" tale, I'll just bore you with my own attempt at a review:

This is a really beefy album, consisting of very dark, masculine musical content with Hammill's melodramatic voice and equally dark, dramatic lyricism tying the ensemble together to equal out to one essential Progressive masterpiece. King Crimson's own Robert Fripp makes an appearance as the guest guitarist for this album, which further drives the dark nature of this album home. The only complaints I can conjure up are the obvious issue of sound quality (which even on the re-mastered version, it still seems hollow), along with some points during the songs, there's a small bit of aimless meddling, at least in my opinion; your mileage my vary. All-in-all, these issues don't bother me enough to rate this masterpiece anything less than 5 stars. This shows a very raw VdGG beginning to hit their compositional stride, and is a must-have for any fans of edgier, darker Symphonic Prog.