ASIA

Asia is highly regarded as having one of the best line-ups progressive rock could ever have, and i gotta agree with that common sense. However, against all the odds, such talented and skilled musicians that, during the decade before the formation of Asia, had redefined rock as a genre and literally created such different and colorful pieces of music that will continue being masterpieces for generations to come, gave birth to this abomination.

Here, we find many things that conspire negatively to the album. The first (and most important) thing is that this is not progressive rock. Don't get me wrong, i am not a prog extremist and i am fairly open minded when it comes to music, but come on, this album and this band contains only AOR and a kind of AOR that influenced progressive rock negatively, since bands like Yes and ELPowell were influenced by Asia's debut at the time. The second problem is that this album sounds like its from the 80's, meaning that, like most things from the 80's, the music sounds extremely dated and out of fashion. The third problem is that the music and specially the lyrics are kind of shallow. The last problem that i find important to point out is that this band seems to be or tries to be american, despite all of its members being from England.

The songs are usually very commercially driven towards the 80's audience, making them, as said before, sound dated and out of fashion. However, there are some songs that are actually good, like Sole Survivor and Wildest Dreams, but they are standing alone in a sea of cheese. However, by good i mean only music-wise, not considering the lyrics because they suck.

Grade and Final Thoughts

This album, besides all the cheese, is somewhat good. However, knowing what Steve Howe, Carl Palmer and John Wetton did before this album i just simply can't give it the 3 stars grade. Besides, this album does not appeal in almost any way to the rpog rock fan. So, because of that, 2 stars.

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