TESTIMONY

I must set the stage a little bit first. I had not listened to any "NEW" prog since the 70s to late 80s as I was musically elsewhere after that. In the mid-2000s, through a winding "Kansas" related path, I discovered this album and did not know anything about this musician, so I decided to take the plunge and was totally amazed that music like this was still being made.

The double album has to be listened to in its entirety to get the full grasp of the concept and emotion, which was Morse's life changing event of accepting Jesus Christ. He fully captures the conversion process as he takes you through all the highs and lows of life, entangled with the inner struggle of dealing with God. What better way to make a concept work, than something real in your own life.

What makes this really special is the music. It covers a wide range of styles: rock, pop, classical, flamenco, jazz, metal, prog, and even a tad of country (in context, it fit), but mostly staying in the symphonic area of prog. The music fully represents the emotion filled with highs and lows, building exhilaration and release. Sometimes you need those lows or softer moments to bring out the power of the high moments. It has melody; it is ok to have melody in prog?:)

As mentioned before, this was one of my first couple of albums of listening to "NEW" prog. Through the work I kept noticing that the drummer was pretty damn good, Portnoy of course. This led me on a discovery of a myriad of bands, Dream Theatre, Transatlantic, The Flower Kings, Marillion, Spock's Beard, and so on and so on (which involved this website quite a bit).

I would discover that musically, Morse's next release - One, I liked better. However, I give this a 5 star rating as the whole work captivates the emotion of his life changing event and is still excellent musically.

AEProgman

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