WITHOUT INTRODUCTION

POLYPHONY was a short lived band from Virginia Beach, VA who put out this one highly eclectic album back in 1971 or 1972 depending on the source. Originally released on the Eleventh Hour label it has been long out of print until recent years. Unfortunately the re-release is pretty weak as it is not remastered, there are few liner notes and they actually list the wrong track order. Quite lame, however all that aside, it is the music that counts and the music is excellent and exciting. Probably one of the better progressive albums from the USA at this time.

I would call this an equal mix of influences from King Crimson in terms of proto-metal and avant-garde jazz, ELP or The Nice in terms of symphonic bombast and early Pink Floyd in terms of heavy psychedelic tendencies. The music is quite complex as it goes through many changes but generally always energetic and progressive to the max. This could easily be called eclectic. In addition to the major influences there are also Santana-esque percussion parts, strange slide guitar riffs, slow and pastoral Genesis-like symphonic parts and even some hard bluesy rock sections and circus music. The second track "Forty Second Thing In 39 Seconds" is a short little burst of symphonic moog wankery that is rather unique.

Unfortunately the production on this is not so good meaning bad. It has a tinny sound and is in clear need of a remastering. Musically this is quite exciting and I find it to be worthy of the term "long lost classic." The first track "Juggernaut" is just filled to the brim with every prog trick in the book and it takes a full 9 ½ minutes of instrumental prowess to finally get to the vocals on the track. This is the kind of prog that has the right formula going on. It is both melodic and slightly dissonant at times. It varies the tempos, time signatures and compositional developments and keeps it interesting throughout its entirety. With two sprawling epic tracks, POLYPHONY more than proved it was capable of playing with the big boys of prog. This is a band that I would love to hear more music from for the mere 37 minutes is only a teaser! Musically 4.5 but i'm only giving this 4 stars because the production is just so bad it hurts.