EQUINOX

Styx seem to be at the crossroads of pop rock and prog rock; the whole feeling of their style is a bit pompous with plenty of keyboard work and fantasy themes to go around, yet the structures of the songs don't go overboard in complexity and neither do the instrumentalists. EQUINOX to me is nothing more than a decent rock album with tinges of prog and pop (possibly defining AOR, but I'm not an expert in that genre). While there isn't a bad song amongst the bunch, only ''Suite Madame Blue'' has the guts to stick out. The various dynamic changes in that song are extremely effective with the climactic guitar riff punctuating everything that Styx are capable of.

There's not much else to speak of in terms of the remaining songs other than ''Prelude 12'' is a great lead-in to ''Suite Madame Blue''. For those two songs, this album is worth at least an investigation.