PYRAMID

For me, Pyramid is where the early Alan Parsons Project formula begins to wear thin. Whilst it was a nice breath of fresh air on Tales of Mystery and Imagination, and the group had successfully retooled the sound to suit the needs of I, Robot, on Pyramid I find that, at least in the early phases of the album they seem to be doing it by the numbers, with some nice moments here and there which unfortunately are doing things which the group accomplished better on the previous two releases.

One More River, however, steps in to turn things around - from this point on, there's occasional injections of New Wave ideas creeping in here and there to the band's sound which offer a bit more of a hard edge than anything offered on I, Robot. (Indeed, they hadn't rocked quite that hard since The Telltale Heart on the debut). Part of me wonders whether album might have been a favourite of early neo-prog group Quasar, since several sections of it sound like a bit like the sort of material they might have been deliver on their debut Fire In the Sky had it not suffered a truly horrible production job.

On top of that, the concept is rather clever - if you piece it together carefully, it's less a story about the Great Pyramids themselves so much as (as the cover art hints) a man who becomes fascinated with the supposed esoteric wisdom encoded in them and the whole Pyramid Power thing (a hot topic when the album was recorded), to the point where his life and personal relationships disintegrate and he has nothing to show for it but crank theories and a worrying obsession. (Comparisons between this and being a prog fan I suggest you keep to yourself!)