TESTIMONY

After getting One and Sola Scripta, I was eager to hear more of Morse´s work, since both albums were quite superior to anything he had released with his former band, Spock´s Beard. Testimony goes the same way, partially. It´s a concept work, telling his life before and after his conversion to christianity and is also a double CD with well over two hours of music. With so much stuff in it, what about the quality of the music? Well, it´s a gigantic enterprise and I´m glad to say that Neal Morse is talented enough to succeed in many aspects. I mean, there is hardly any filler on it, but - like almost all concept albums - it suffers from the musical standpoint, since the melodies have to follow the storyline.

So while Morse shows his great skills both as a prolific songwriter and performer (and he is backed by equally talented musicians), there is simply too much here. Testimony is probably the most musically varied of all his solo output. You can find just about everything here: symphonic rock, hard rock, ballads, gospel, country, etc. And, no matter how good he is (believe me, he is very good!), to write so many tracks in such little time means the quality of the tracks also varies wildly. CD 1 for instance is very good (several parts remind me of Transatlantic´s best moments), but things begin to drag by the second part of the story, where he gets also too preachy for my taste.

With an excellent production and tasteful arrangements Testimony could have been a killer CD if it was reduced to a single record putting together the best moments of both. As it is, it is overlong and a bit boring at the end. Still, very good overall.

Rating: 3.5 stars.