THE DARK THIRD

The Dark Third is the debut album by Pure Reason Revolution, and, as with many modern bands, there are questions over whether they are prog or not. After listening to the album and having seen the band perform live I can honestly say that they are quite definitely prog, but pretty close to the current UK Indie scene sonically.

Its strange, you here many of the Indie bands that pervade the charts these days and the sound of it never really struck me as something that could be expanded upon and taken into the realm of prog. So you can imagine just how surprised I was when I first heard Pure Reason Revolutions debut album as it does just that. This album includes the "sound" of said Indie scene with an ability to expand on themes and push them forward.

Though this isn't a concept album most of the songs segue from one to the other. This gives the album a great flow and helps to keep the possibility of week tracks down as it feels like its all connected. For instance a hard, fast paced song will slow down and flow into the following, more spacey, song (namely Voices In Winter segueing into Bullets Dominae). It might be an after effect of this technique but I do find that it gives the whole album a sense of cohesion and structure.

As you would expect from a young band Pure Reason Revolution put plenty of energy into their music with the hard rocking songs really grabbing you by the neck. However, they do the slow and spacey just as well. The musical abilities of the band members are not to be underestimated as well, granted they're no match for the Dream Theater's of this world but they can certainly hold their own, except on keyboards which I feel they need to work at. Chloe Alper is the stand out musician of the band for me as a very strong bassist, its just a shame that she didn't play bass on all the songs. Vocally this band is slightly unusual in the fact that they have two lead singers who's vocal performances seem to work together, and at times strangely remind me of Pain of Salvation in the way their voices work together and harminies, like they regularly do in Pain of Salvation, though obviously not sounding like them.

The big problem with this album is that PRR lack variation at times. I said before that they are able to take an idea an work with it, but all to often the ideas are very similar, though not so similar that this album sounds like one or two songs constantly repeated. Because of this some parts of the album can get a little boring and repetitive after a few listens, particularly the longest track The Bright Ambassadors of Morning, but not much of the album actually seems to suffer this too badly. The other drawback is the keyboards, they are used decently for effects and moods but they don't really do much, and certainly not enough to grab much attention.

Overall this is a good debut album and well worth checking out. There's plenty of energy and enough subtlety to get the listener coming back for more. However they could do with being a bit more diverse in the ideas department. Plenty of promise here and a band that I can see becoming something special, watch this space. 3 stars.