HEART OF DAVID

When it comes to Christian prog musicians, Neal Morse has to be at the top of that list as far as being the most known. Geoff Mann from TWELFTH NIGHT comes to mind, and to a lesser extent Peer Gee the long time bass player for PENDRAGON. He comes by his faith honestly being the son of a Church of England vicar. I would like to think that he and Geoff Mann had some talks. Peter became part of PENDRAGON when Nick Barrett needed a guitarist and Gee was friends with his older brother. Peter eventually switched to bass and has been PENDRAGON's bass player since that 1985 debut.

I was surprised to see that Peter has released the same amount of albums as PENDRAGON since 1991, when his debut called "Calvary" was self released. "Heart Of David" was released the same year as "The Window Of Life" in 1993. A lot of guests are helping him out here including vocalist Tracy Hitchings, keyboardist Clive Nolan, guitarist karl Groom, drummer Fudge Smith, bassist Ian Salmon and many more. The music is pastoral and in the neo/symphonic style. Pleasant is the word.

My favourite track is "Crying On The Inside" just because it is different from the rest in a good way, the most interesting song in my opinion. I also like the back to back "On Broken Wings" and "Water's Edge" as the best of the rest, mainly because these two are moving. The album doesn't start well for me with the first two tracks and really the smooth sax and vocals don't help on this record. "The Enemy Within" and "Beyond Ourselves" are two more I have trouble with.

David had the life that merits a couple of movies representing his life, before he became king, then afterwards. My favourite character in the Old Testament with Moses next. David killed a lot of people, he was a man of war, and courageous to a fault. He was a song writer, composer and musician. He wrote half the Psalms, around 73 to 75 compositions, and many those are still beloved today. He loved God(see Psalm 63) and that caused him to do heroic things as he felt God was right there supporting him in all that he did. Ask Goliath.

A nice album but not much more I'm afraid. I want to mention though his 2018 release called "The Bible" for it's cover art. Done by Simon Williams who did those beautiful PENDRAGON album covers back in the day, especially "The Window Of Life", "The Masquerade Overture" and "Not Of This World". Ties the two projects together nicely.