ARDOUR

ETHOS was a little known American prog rock band that came from an unlikely place: Fort Wayne, Indiana. Kinda strange to see a prog band coming from an area of the country that tends to be conservative. But they were lucky and got signed to Capitol Records, and went to New York and got busy recording this album. The band seemed to be lead by guitarist/vocalist Wil Sharpe, the rest of the band consisted of keyboardist Michael Ponczek, drummer Mark Richards, bassist Brad Stephenson, and keyboardist L. Duncan Hammond.

This album isn't exactly what I call essential, this is an American band trying to be European, but still sounding American (at least KANSAS had the sense of sounding American). The vocals still sound quite American, but there band had the benefit of two keyboardists, in which Moog and Mellotron are the most dominant. The lyrics all have that cosmic sci-fi theme that seemed to be a common theme to many prog bands in 1976. The cover to the LP has an Atlantean theme. The music can be a bit on the clichéd side, lyrics included, like the opening "Intrepid Travellers". "Atlanteans", as you might guess, is the song describing the cover. The lyrics seeme to more speak of Atlantis in the present tense, rather than the famous rise and destruction (like what EARTH & FIRE did three years before with their "Atlantis" album or ELOY did one year later with "Ocean"). "Spirit of Music" has some rather dumb lyrics lamenting about how the rock scene isn't the same in 1976 as it was in 1964, which is really odd, given they were playing prog rock, which is hardly supposed to sound like anything bands were doing in '64! And like the rest of the album, "Spirit of Music" is prog rock.

Basically this whole album is like many of the prog rock albums I own: decent enough, worth having, but not essential.