ASIA

It's interesting hearing this album after all of these years of adventures in abstract prog music and training in classical musicianship in college. Interesting in the sense that this album now sounds comical, while I remember it sounding cool back in high school (which is why I bothered to review it). The first track of course is the big radio hit from the 80s, and you pretty much couldn't get any more dated sounding than this (from prog musicians anyway). It's strange hearing Wetton's vocals now after listening to Red all of these years (to be fair, his singing is actually better in this dreadful album, sadly enough).Most early 80s rock cliches can be found in this album. There are moments from each musician where I hear some strong hints at prog style, for example the interesting sections in Soul Survivor. However, these shades of progressiveness almost make it worse, tantalizing the listener into being so aware of the potential for creativity that was never really tapped into. Every moment of the album is so contrived; the commercialism is, quite frankly, disgusting and boring, and what hints of skilled playing that one might find are either out of place, lame, or just preposterous sounding. It makes one imagine that Journey, Boston, and even Foreigner were doing at least something right at the time, which is disgraceful. It's like a bunch of extremely skilled painters using their skills to create vulgar, even lack-luster looking Anime drawings; as a person with a profession in the arts, I myself I find it almost offensive. I would even rather listen to Cyndi Lauper, since you can at least sing a catchy melody with that kind of pop music. Here, it's just commercialized noodling around.

Every moment of this album is dreadful in one way or another. Don't waste any money or time on it.