A MOMENT BEYOND TIME

The Canadian band performed numerous live shows after ''Catharsis'',but their good activity was not enough to hold singer Christopher Wells on board.His replacement came within the band's member crew with keyboardist Stephen Geysens taking over the vocal duties.Shortened to a quartet Visible Wind recorded the follow-up of ''Catharsis'', entitled ''A Moment Beyond Time'', released on the US Progressive Records.

The overall style hasn't changed much compared to the debut with the band insisting on playing melodic progressive rock with a bit of AOR thrown in and based more on atmosphere and less on complexity,maybe a couple of tracks are a bit more complex this time.Additionally the compositions have again a strong lyrical content with Geysens prooving to be a great and emotional singer,with also one track being sung in French.A good combination of synths and organ with an accesible approach make the band's influences obvious and these are mainly GENESIS of the 75's-80's era along with some SAGA and RUSH vibes.The guitar work of Philippe Woolgar remains a reference point with plenty of memorable hooks,while there is also some more space for instrumental passages on this sophomore release,which end up to be quite interesting.The album though suffers at moments from the mediocre poppish production of the time and some cheap synth sounds on a few tracks.

While I slightly prefer their debut over ''A Moment Beyond Time'',this new album by Visible Wind still finds the band grounded in progressive rock fields with some great musicianship throughout,despite the light commercial tendencies.Recommended, especially to fans of easy- going progressive rock.