THE SEVENTH HOUSE

After the excellent "Ever" and "Subterranea", IQ consolidate their particular style to compose pieces of deep luminosity and intensity, which take without denying or disguising the progressive seventies influences (the Genesis of the Gabriel era above all), but more and more focused on going their own way with the security that maturity and the passing of the years grants, as shown in "The Seventh House" (2000), the band's eighth album.

A work that links extensive progressive lucubrations, such as the opening "The Wrong Side of Weird", where Martin Orford's diaphanous keyboards give rise to a sonorous progression that gains strength and ends with a brief nod to Genesis' "Broadway Melody of 1974", or the aching "The Seventh House" and Mike Holmes' crystalline acoustic arpeggios preceding a shifting melodic density with Peter Nicholls' voice in perfect communion with Orford's keyboards (surely the best track on the album), with more abbreviated developments such as the doughy "Erosion" and John Jowitt's rocky bass accompanying Nicholls' lacerating singing, or the hopeful "Zero Hour" with Orford's steamy suspenseful keyboards and Holmes' magnificent final guitar solo.

And despite the insubstantial melody of "Shooting Angels" that neither its promising beginning nor the saxophone of guest Tony Wright manage to rescue at all, the desolate "Guiding Light", another track of extended duration, concludes the album superbly with delicate piano notes and sensitive acoustic chords lulled by Nicholls' peaceful voice until the instrumental explosion guided by the awakened percussion of Paul Cook and the jubilant and epic closing. Neo Prog in its purest essence.

"The Seventh House" is an admirable piece of work from IQ (one more, by the way...), as admirable as the fact of remaining untouched by external pressures and keeping the progressive roots safe at the beginning of the new millennium.

4 stars