TESTIMONY

Neal Morse

Symphonic Prog

4.05 | 517 ratings

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Flucktrot
Prog Reviewer

Just another overblown double album that should have been condensed into one.

I don't care if an album is about conversion to Christianity or any other topic--if it's an interesting story and put concisely to music, I'll eat it up. What Morse delivers here is by no means concise. In fact, this may be one of the most overblown albums I have heard. I really don't know what to make of this, because I have so much respect for most of the rest of Morse's notable output.

There's no doubt--Morse put a gigantic amount of love and thought into laying out this album: recurring themes, nice instrumentation, and a personally relevant topic. However, in my mind, many of those themes are revisited too many times, and with too little meaningful additions, and eventually it feels like playing a good album, and then playing the album over again (which usually spoils the initial experience). We also have a diversity that leads to incoherence rather than variety: of course the slightly Latin-tinged segments, but also some country (Sing it High), and also an inordinately large amount of praise music toward the end.

Here's my basic take: if Morse can't put a concise and musically inspiring account of his conversion together, I'd rather read it in a biography (if I'm interested) than a supposedly "prog" album. That's certainly not his fault: he didn't claim to be making a prog album, but instead a musical journey of his experience. Either way, if you want a tender and (I have to admit) inspiring story, you should look into this album. On the other hand, if you are are hard-core progger in it for the music, then it would be difficult to imagine this flipping your trigger.

Flucktrot | 3/5 | 2007-10-6

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