FEEL EUPHORIA

American prog-rockers Spock's Beard saw the departure of Neal Morse, the man who founded the band, and who wrote most if not all of the music on their albums, in 2002, right after the release of their critically acclaimed double-album 'Snow', leaving them unable to tour it. Unsurprisingly for a progressive rock band, however, the drummer took the frontman spot, and the whole band started contributing to the writing process - having lost the main man of the band, and failing to tour the then-new album, Spock's Beard took on the challenge of releasing a new one the very next year, and this album was 'Feel Euphoria', their seventh one.

As much as this was a very interesting period for the band, it has to be said that 'Feel Euphoria' is at least unimpressive when compared to all the material preceding it. With everyone receiving writing credits, and this would include drummer and vocalist Nick D'Virgilio, keyboard wizard Ryo Okumoto, guitarist Alan Morse, and bassist Dave Meros, alongside songwriters John Boegehold and Stan Ausmus, this record has more of a demo sound, rather than a proper Spock's Beard studio album. The glorious and emotional epic sounds seem to be gone with Neal Morse, as the songs on 'Feel Euphoria' lose direction and play for too long.

Contrary to that, there are actually good song ideas, like 'Onomatopoeia', probably the strongest and most energetic song on the album, 'The Bottom Line', the title track with its non-standard sound, and some of the episodes on the big epic track that comes at the end of the album. The problem is that they sound too unconvincing, some of these ideas are either underdeveloped, or overdone to a point where they become tedious. And SB have certainly released much better epics prior to this album. All this makes 'Feel Euphoria' a decent album, that could, however, fool someone into thinking that Spock's Beard is just another mediocre band, which they definitely are not; The record does not have a universal appeal, and its strong moments would be best appreciated by fans of the band.