POINT OF KNOW RETURN

Point of Know Return is the band's last truly progressive album, and consequently their last essential one. Clearly a commercial influence is slowly taking over their sound, but there is still plenty of prog excitement to be found here.

The title track is a classic Kansas tune with an up-tempo, AOR atmosphere carried by strong vocals.

'Paradox' is a more interesting track, filled with plenty of keyboard that graced their last album. The majority of the song is vocal driven except for the instrumental break filled with violin and keyboard.

The short 'Spider' has an obvious ELP influence in its keyboard-dominated two minutes. Oddly enough, there is more packed into this short song than any other of the album.

'Portrait (He Knew) starts of in the classic prog Kansas way, but shifts to a slower, powerful hard rocking section. Luckily the track ends on a strong note.

'Closet Chronicles' has a mix of monotonous vocal sections and some truly awesome instrumentals.

Unfortunately, as strong as side one is, side two kind of goes downhill. 'Lightning's Hand,' 'Sparks of Tempest,' and 'Nobody's Home' are all either plain old rockers or monotonous ballads. Radio has mostly spoiled my perception of Dust In the Wind, though it isn't a very good track in the first place. The last song, 'Hopelessly Human' has some nice prog parts, but is still decent at best.

Overall, while this has a ton of prog moments, it has an equal number of plain, uninteresting moments. This is a decent album for a Kansas fan, but is too inconsistent for a regular symphonic prog listener.

6/10