GOD IN THREE PERSONS

Conceptually brilliant, this album falls nearly flat in execution. This is a concept album that tells a strange story of a widowed man who walls into a bizarre relationship with a set of conjoined twins. The story itself is typically bizarre, with love, hate, pain, sex, violence, etc.

The album starts out magnificently, with Laurie Amat singing the album credits over an almost symphonic introduction. It's about as close to traditional prog as the eyeballs ever get. But then the story begins. Completely spoken, in a cowboy rhyme deadpan, over mostly nondescript backing music, the drone of the story itself meakes it a chore to pay attention to the majority of the album. In fact, if the "lyrics" were not printed on the CD booklet, I probably wouldn't know the story at all, other than the few snippets that capture my attention.

It's notable that Phillip "Snakefinger" Lithman was supposed to add guitar to the music. It probably would have helped quite a bit. But still, the droning cowboy voice throughout might be insurmountable.