THE POWER AND THE GLORY

This is one of the most aggressively challenging and complex progessive albums Gentle Giant ever released, which of course means it is one of the most aggressively challenging and complex albums ever made. The opening track wastes no time before descending into a menacing, claustrophobic "chorus" with crunching chords and masterful dissonant vocals, while "So Sincere" follows it up as a kind of miniature bible for GG's off-kilter approach to music making. "Cogs in Cogs" can barely contain itself as it races through dense tangles of raucous keyboard riffs and shouted vocals, when suddenly we find ourselves amidst a shifting patchwork of voices all falling in and out of time with one another like some animated jigsaw puzzle. Gentle Giant were the mad geniuses of the prog world, and this is their mad genius album -- it's hard to believe that there were still more masterpieces to come after this one.