NUMB EYES, THE SOUL REVELATION

After more than 10 listenings to this album it's still hard for me to determine exactly how good it is. I like the highly melodic aspect of this music but there are also some flaws like the vocals and the production quality.

The Wish is the opening instrumental track showing already nice melodic content. Yet this is not the most inspired/inspiring track of the album. 3,5*.

Next is In the Border Line where some strange vocals appear of the female vocalist (Lali Belza ?) but the other elements of this song are really appealing to me like the fast guitar and the great composition it proves to be as well as very good melody and build up. 4*.

Going from here to there etc. is an extremely short interlude sounding like a darkish theme.

Abydos is also short (4 min.) but this is a substantial song starting with acoustic and electric guitar playing mixed. I suddenly realize this is a quite unique phenomenon and it sounds very interesting. This also goes for the rest of the song, the melody is great once again and it's ultimately one of my favorites of the album. 4,25*.

The Tramp of the Future is the first of two mini-epics that complete the album. Again this one starts instrumentally but it sounds less structured and more messy than previous. After two minutes we hear two male vocalists (Santi Calero and ?) who also don't really have the best vocals I'ved ever heard but it's still bearable. It becomes obvious to me that (and this is actually the case with many progbands) their strengths lie in the compositions and instrumental handling and not in the vocals. The fast guitar playing appears again after 4 minutes combined with scat singing and this goes one for some time until halfway the song the vocals become dominant again singing lyrics once more. It becomes evident this mini epic is actually build up in fractions of two minutes each time. This fifth section also contains fast guitar play but this time without vocals. Sixth and last section let the whole thing end up in a slower style with even nice fade out from the guitar. Interesting song but all in all not as good as previous and next. 4*.

The closing title track is the longest song on the album and feature the female vocals once more. The song starts off relatively quiet and not very impressive. This will not last too long and the last ten minutes of the song and album are clearly reserved for the most spectacular and most impressive of the entire 42 minutes. Both execution and composition reach their peak here and it's all highly enjoyable to me. The build up is stunning. 4,25*.

I believe this effort is hard done by when people state this is just a mediocre or poor performance. I will not go that far to consider this the biggest hidden gem of our site but it certainly deserves credit. I'm glad to have been able to check it out and will play it more often in the future for sure. Four stars are well deserved here.