INTRODUCING PENDRAGON

The story of Pendragon began in Stroud, Gloucestershire, England in 1978. Four very young musicians got together and decided to form a rock band named Zeus Pendragon consisting of Nick Barrett, Julian Baker, Stan Cox and Nigel Harris. Soon, Zeus Pendragon started to play cover versions of some classic rock tunes of Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, Fleetwood Mac and Santana. The Zeus, a part of their name was dropped when Baker decided it was far too long to fit across a T shirt. There were some personnel changes in the early days, but since 1986 the line up has remained almost stable. The band is active in the progressive rock revival since the 80's and belong to the founders of the neo-prog sub-genre with Marillion, IQ, Pallas, Galahad and Twelfth Night. Like their pairs, they often appeared as a support acts to Marillion and other major progressive bands. However and gradually, Pendragon was able to achieve a solid status as one of the greatest progressive acts nowadays, performing alone or as headliners in many places of many countries.

'In Introducing Pendragon' is a compilation of Pendragon and that was released in 2013. It has fourteen tracks. The first track 'Kowtow' is from 'Kowtow'. It has an intricate structure and a good guitar work. This is a nice track with a first part calm, with a great melody and a good rocking style in the second part. It has nice lyrics about war that proves that Barrett can write good lyrics. The second track 'The Voyager' is from 'The World'. It's an epic ballad with great keyboards and beautiful acoustic guitar work creating a harmonic and engaging colourful pallet of sounds. Barrett's guitar work is good, with Nolan's keyboards producing lush textures of sounds, providing a great harmony. The third track 'Breaking The Spell' is from 'The Window Of Life'. It's one of the best ballads of Pendragon. It has nice keyboard and great guitar work, a dynamic bass line and good drumming. It has a beautiful symphonic and hypnotic atmosphere that shows the perfect communion between Barrett and Nolan. The fourth track 'Paintbox' is from 'The Masquerade Overture'. It's a great track with a nice atmosphere, great melodies and a memorable chorus. It has a good keyboard work and a superb guitar playing by Barrett. The fifth track 'Masters Of Illusion' is from 'The Masquerade Overture'. It's an epic, one of the highlights on that album with more than twelve minutes. It's exciting from the quiet beginning till the last moment. It combines perfectly well the old progressive rock style with the more melodic tracks of their latest albums. The sixth track 'If I Were The Wind (And You Were The Rain)' is from 'Not Of This World'. It has long great instrumental passages, emotional lyrics and is a fantastic symphonic composition. It could hardly be more majestic and warm. It has fine backing vocals by Tina Riley too and a spacey atmosphere and excellent performances by all band's members. The seventh, eighth, ninth and tenth tracks 'For Your Journey', 'Sou' By Sou' West', 'We Talked' and 'Two Roads', respectively, are four parts of the track 'The Wishing Well' from 'Believe'. It's an epic with about twenty-one minutes. The first part is a largely spoken piece with a celestial atmospheric ambience, extremely beautiful. The second part is beautiful with dual acoustic guitar playing during the verses and great electric guitar solos played thorough the choruses. The third part is a great rock song filled with some weird vocal effects and great musical parts well performed by all band's members. The fourth part starts as an acoustic ballad that soon rocks strong with an excellent slide guitar solo in the end. The eleventh track 'Indigo' is from 'Pure'. This is a dark epic track played in two parts of over thirteen absorbing minutes. It starts with a metallic guitar riff and the song evolves into its main theme through a barrage of guitar accompanied by ferocious drum work. It's one of Pendragon's finest tracks. The twelfth track 'It's Only Me' is from 'Pure'. It starts with piano, guitar and harmonica. It's an emotional ballad with lyrics about how resilient we are as a child. It's a slow and sad lament that ends with a superb and memorable extended Barrett's guitar solo. The thirteenth track 'Empathy' is from 'Passion'. It starts with a powerful heavy rhythm. It's full of constant changes. It's a complete song with a gentle vocal work, a nice guitar solo, a beautiful piano performance that ends with a magnificent orchestral sound. The fourteenth track 'This Green And Pleasant Land' is from 'Passion'. It's a lengthy epic, a beautiful track more in the taste of the old fashion Pendragon's fans. It's an emotional, beautiful and intelligent track with Barrett telling us the story of his homeland and where we can see him providing those dreamy and beautiful guitar passages.

Conclusion: 'In Introducing Pendragon' is a very interesting compilation album of Pendragon. When it was released, Pendragon had already released eight studio albums and almost all have tracks represented here. The only exception is their debut studio album 'The Jewel' with none of its tracks chosen to be part of it, which seems to be a bit strange to me. 'The Jewel' is good enough to can be represented here. For instance 'Leviathan', 'Alaska' and 'The Black Night' are all great tracks that could fit perfectly well here. Besides, 'The Jewel' is a better album than 'Kowtow' is. Thus, 'In Introducing Pendragon' is an interesting and good compilation album of Pendragon but isn't really an essential item.

Prog is my Ferrari. Jem Godfrey (Frost*)

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