AT THE SOUND OF THE BELL

Fourteen months after the release of the iconic debut album, the band came back with the follow-up. A very good one, but way below the standards Pampered Menial had set. Perhaps it was the fact the band was falling apart (violinist Siegfried Carver and drummer Mike Safron had quit) or that everybody wanted to be a songwriter but very few could deliver, according to Surkamp. My opinion is that aspirations for commercial success might played a key role to that. I get this feeling because the album portrays a sound deprived of the most complex and prog elements of the band. This doesn't mean that the songs are bad, quite the contrary, tunes like the opener She Came Shining or the captivating ballad Gold Nuggets or the darker Valkerie are prime examples, but then again Try to Hang On or She Breaks Like a Morning Sky could had been written by any other ordinary band. Still, no ordinary band could ever come up with Did You See Him Cry which goes through numerous and very interesting changes. It is a testimony that the band could prog no end, but the song was "buried" at the end of the album, perhaps an indication of the orientation that the band meant to follow. Early Morning On is a good and very enjoyable song, but Did you See Him Cry is special; that's the difference I am talking about. And it is evident that PAvlov's Dog could come up with more A-grade stuff like that, but they just didn't.

Anyway, the album, mysteriously, sold more copies than its predecessor but I think the prog collective memory and taste has arguably placed Pampered ...on a higher ground.

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