PYRAMID

Followup to "I Robot", but also a notch down. I noticed Duncan MacKay cut back on the synthesizers a bit here, maybe because Alan PARSONS, Eric Woolfson & Co. wanted to move somewhat back to what they were doing on "Tales of Mystery and Imagination".

Still, the album's full of great songs. The opening is "Voyager", an instrumental in the grand tradition of APP, it then segues in to "What Goes Up". Eric Woolfson does some backup vocals on this song (although the album itself makes no mention of him doing any vocal duties here), so it comes across sounding like prog rock and (when Woolfson does the vocals) soft rock. "The Eagle Will Rise Again" is a nice acoustic ballad, not unlike "Some Other Time" off "I Robot". "Can't Take it With You" received some minor radio airplay, and I always thought this was one of the better cuts off the album. "In the Lap of the Gods" has a more Egyptian feel to it, plus John Leach adds on his cimbalom (Hungarian dulcimer) and kantele (Finnish zither). The end part turns to more typical ALAN PARSONS PROJECT fashion, complete with choir and orchestra. "Pyramania" is a short pop song with silly lyrics about pyramid obsession (in fact the front cover is about the song, and the person you see looking like he has a headache is none other than Alan PARSONS himself). This song also received some minor radio airplay itself (I actually remember when radio stations did play this song, and I was 5 years old back in 1978). "Hyper Gamma Space" is an wonderful synthesizer-dominated instrumental, complete with electric piano. The closing piece is "Shadow of a Lonely Man", which tends to be a rather orchestrated ballad.

The album in general isn't as good as "I Robot", but at least it's nowhere as bad as some of the stuff they did in the mid '80s such as "Vulture Culture" and "Stereotomy".