FULL CIRCLE

Far away from masterpiece, even from "excellent addition", Saga's "Full Circle" is a inconsistent mixture of harder and softer songs, mostly in 4-5 minutes range. If You are new to Saga, and like the insectoid creature on front cover, be cautious, neither music nor lyric has nothing to do with it (unless You want a nice poster, because in my version booklet can be unfolded to 9 times size front cover). The "prog related" term is quite good to determine music genre played by Saga, for it is some kind of progressive hard pop-rock, with lot of keyboards and elements of "soft metal" recognized in use of guitar and drums.

The softer tracks are generally above others, all with acoustical guitar, like nice ballad "Follow me", with little help from The Kids Choir in refrain, then "Home", and ala Alan Parsons "Not this way (chapter 10)". The closing track, "Goodbye" is also nice sympho pop ballad. Of harder ones, above others stand "Uncle Albert's eyes (chapter 13)", very good "Don't say goodbye" and "A night to remember". First two tracks sound like many others worthless lyric hard pop songs aimed to be a hit, while "Time bomb" is among the weaker moments on album. Especially the drumming is uninspirative and monotonous in harder ones. Sounding and produced very good, but with only a few memorable points, for me the real value is a little bit below three stars.