DESTINY?

The good sits amongst the poor on this album. The rather below average AOR ''Legend'' strikes your senses on the weak side unfortunately. To be honest, the music developed in ''Destiny'' (the title track) remains in the same AOR-ish moods even if more enjoyable.

The nice rock ballad ''Slave To Liberty'' is the first good song and features an excellent guitar part. The job of the lead vocalist is also more convincing in this song; but you'll have to be able to bear ''Rush'' (Lee) or ''Pavlov's Dog'' (Surkamp) type of vocals to fully appreciate.

Since the band is Canadian, there are some French words to introduce ''Before The Dawn'' which shows a heavier angle of their music. Still, this is radio-oriented music and shouldn't thrill lots of progheads. The acoustic middle part is well crafted and the following electric guitar section is, again, very strong.

The long ''Queen Of Vajra Space'' has a more prog feel. Very similar in much aspect to ''IQ'' (including vocals). It is true to say that their lead vocalist has a pretty wide range (even if not always appealing). Melodic instrumental sections (of which guitar absolutely shines) are really astounding and raise the quality of this album. ''Queen ? '' is THE highlight .

The quality of the album remains in good territory further on, even if some popish atmosphere does prevail in the rock ballad ''Mourning Man''. Actually, this album ends up better than it all started. It really sounds much more to neo-prog during ''Submerged''. The track doesn't submerged me overall, but I have to admit that the vocals are quite passionate.

The closing epic also belongs to the best material available: as usual the guitar is extremely pleasant and the feel ranges from neo to heavy-prog (even prog metal, if only this genre would exist).

Three stars for this album