THE TALE OF WOE

"The Tale Of Woe" is the second full-length studio album by US, California based progressive rock act Puppet Show. The album was released through Progrock Records in 2007. It´s the successor to "Traumatized" from 1997, so it´s been 10 years since the release of the band´s debut album. There´s been one lineup change since the first album as drummer Matt Lipford has been replaced by Chris Mack.

Although it´s been 10 years since the last album, Puppet Show pretty much starts off where they let go on "Traumatized". So stylistically this is still symphonic progressive rock with neo-progressive leanings which strong ties to Genesis and Marillion. Lead vocalist Sean Frazier sounds even more like Peter Gabriel here than he did on the first album, but fortunately he doesn´t sound as strained and sometimes close to hysterical screaming as he did on the debut album. "The Tale Of Woe" also features a significantly better sounding production job than the debut album, and upon conclusion it´s in every way possible a much better album than "Traumatized" and it´s great to hear that the 10 years between the two albums were spend well on rehearsing, writing better songs, and maybe most importantly to save up for some professional recording equipment.

The clone factor is of course pretty high here and "The Tale Of Woe" is an album for those who just can´t get enough of artists and releases strongly influenced by Genesis and Marillion. If you try and look past that, "The Tale Of Woe" is definitely an album worth investigating. It´s both well produced, well performed, and well written, and everthing is delivered with the right amount of passion and conviction. a 3.5 star (70%) rating is deserved.