V

At the End of the Day starts things out great; well composed and exciting with a good mix of sounds and tones; however, successive songs simply don't do it for me. Revelation is a noisy mess that comes from, and goes no where, its only effect leaving the listener bored of Morse's bland shouts. Thoughts 2 is better, since it actually demonstrates the band's creative playing unfortunately juxtaposed with horrible lyrics from Morse. All On a Sunday isn't even worth discussing, but Goodbye to Yesterday has a nice, mellow vibe and textures.

The big track, Into the Great Nothing is often lauded as one of the band's finest works which did very little for me. After re-listening, I found it to be somewhat repetitive and bland; there are few melodies and vocal moments worth salvaging, and Morse's guitar only occasionally impresses, but what few lush moments there are (provided by the keyboard players mostly) are welcome as is D'Virgilio's always proficient drumming. All in all, a big, heavy-handed exercise in bombast which wears its inspiration on its sleeve and doesn't give the listener credit enough to enjoy anything other than shout chorus after shout chorus.

In the end, V is only an occasional listen for me-- and not just because Neal Morse bothers me... it simply isn't as creative or dynamic as most of the band's other albums, it's simply loud and operatic for the sake of it.

Songwriting: 4 Instrumental Performances: 4 Lyrics/Vocals: 2 Style/Emotion/Replay: 2

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