THE RITE OF PASSAGE

PANGAEA was formed in 1987 under the name ARTICA. Their music is heavy melodic neo-progressive / symphonic rock that sometimes is close to AOR. The songs are very beautiful, well arranged and easy-listened although they have some mood and time signature changes. The music is a mix between CAMEL, DREAM THEATER, KANSAS, MARILLION and YES. The musicians are good, and the guitarist Darrell Masingale and the keyboard player Corey Schenck are the true masters in the band. My favorite tracks are "Time Syndrome", "The Ship (That Must Come In), "The Winds (Behind The Door)", "September Park", "Beggar's Hand" and the main part of the 13-minute epic trilogy "Time Traveler", especially "Pt. II Hollow Dweller". This album is quite good although it lacks in originality and production. If you have a friend who don't like progressive rock, and you want to get him into it, this could be a good album to start with. A progressive album for the masses! PANGAEA's own company Hargadein Music Group independently distributes this album. They are nowadays signed to Angular Records where they have released their second album "Welcome To The Theatre..." (1998).

This second album by USA progrock band Pangaea was produced by Robert Berry, of GTR fame. His influence on the sound is quite obvious: modern, tight and a bit polished.

The first track Time Syndrome showcases the skills of Pangaea: beautiful, very sparkling piano play, strong and flowing guitar work and nice musical ideas. In the long trilogy The Traveller the 'neo-prog feel' is strong featuring a tight rhythmn section and slightly predictable soli. But this doesn't keep Pangaea from making interesting prog, they put a lot of variety in their compositions (strong guitar-synthesizer duet in Theme And Fuge) and great soli: a long and sensitive guitar solo in The Ship, sampled church organ in Declaration a biting guitar solo in Lonely Is A Place. After the sumptuous up-tempo song Beggar's Hand, there is a surprise: two tracks of half a minute, then nothing and finally the very alternating song Hidden Track delivering mandoline, acoustic guitar and a heavy closing section.

This is a pretty good album by a promising band, scouting the borders between early and new progrock. My rating: 3,5 stars.

In 1995 the band Artica comprised Andi Schenck (drums & percussion), Corey Schenck (keyboards, guitars & backing vocals), Darrell Masingale (vocals & lead guitar) and Ron Poulsen (bass guitar & backing vocals). They worked with Robert Berry at his Soundtek Studios and released 'Liquid Placidity', which I must confess to having never come across. Undeterred by the success they changed their name to Pangaea, and over the next few years released three albums under that name, all recorded with Robert and then disappeared. Until now. Not only is there a new album but they have remastered the others and refreshed the artwork, which is why, only 27 years after its debut release, I am now playing 'The Rites of Passage'.

Back in the 90's the most popular (in a relative sense, prog wasn't really popular at all and the mass media were doing their best to keep it that way) form of progressive rock was neo prog, but the styles coming out from the two sides of the Atlantic were very different indeed with the Americans often coming to it from their style of melodic rock and such is the case here. While the likes of Ilúvatar and Timothy Pure managed to make their presence felt in Europe, I missed out on this album at the time and confess that from the beginning to the end I played this with a massive smile on my face. This is very much an album of its time with nice vocals, great hooks, and that neo-prog knack of having a strong rhythm section combining with a guitar and keyboard attack. That this sounds quite dated is of little surprise, given that this style of prog really only flourished for a certain period of time (and is often looked down on by many progheads even though many popular bands have released albums in this vein such as Pendragon, Galahad, IQ, Marillion and many more), but this takes me back to when the underground prog scene really was that and the only way to know what was going on was to read fanzines and go to gigs as the internet did not exist and glossy colour mainstream mags like 'Prog' were a fantasy.

Hearing this now I am somewhat surprised it did not have more impact at the time, especially with the involvement of Robert Berry who always gets the most out of bands and can provide whatever instrumental or production support is required. But they obviously made someone sit up and take notice as the next album would be released by Angular Records in Germany.