IRONY OF FATE

With an excellent debut and a quite good follower,Gerard's future seemed bright but surprisingly they decided to call it off,after their label King Records showed no more interest on releasing progressive rock albums.Toshio Egawa went on to hard rock band Earthshaker,but a few years after he re-united Gerard with fellow member guitarist Yukihiro Fujimura.This time they were joined by Toshimi Nagai on bass and Kota Igarashi on drums.Their long-awaited third album ''Irony of fate'' was released in 1991,ironically on King Records again.

On this album it seems that Egawa was influenced by his time with Earthshaker,so the sound is closer to pompous Hard Rock than Symphonic Progressive Rock.Of course there are plenty of symphonic tendencies,complicated breaks and grandiose passages and Egawa's work has a lot of similarities with the previous albums at moments.But the guitars have now a more metallic edge,the compositions are based on hard rockin' groovy rhytms,much of the keyboard work has this cheap 80's sound and the band has lost also much of its way to the epic atmospheres of the past.Another huge problems are now the vocals,especially when Fujimura tries to sing in English.While in ''Empty Lie, Empty Dream'' and ''Geard'' they were somewhat hidden under the instrumental stuff,this time they play a major role and that is a losing point,as Fujimura has one of the most cheesy and atonal voices to be heard around the prog league,the two ballads of the album are actually more funny than inetersting.Significant exceptions are the fantastic eponymous opener,which comes in a bombastic Symphonic Rock style,and the decent complex instrumental ''My Eyes to the Panic''.

The new Gerard era hasn't begun in the best way.The band with a new line-up tries to find the right steps to become solid and consistent again,but hard rockin' tunes is not the solution by any means.''Irony of fate'' contains some good moments and it might be a good album to complete your Gerard collection,but it definitely not the place to start...2.5 stars.