IT'LL ALL WORK OUT IN BOOMLAND

Along with Clear Blue Sky and Bachbendel, T2 has enjoyed the status of true and forgotten gems of early 70's hard progressive rock, and like the other groups mentioned, their specialty is a hard guitar dominated rock with plenty of riffs. Another similarity between the three groups is that all members were particularly young at the time of recording, particularly guitarist/composer Keith Cross just being 15 or 16. Needless to say that the vinyls (of all three groups) fetched small fortunes until the records received a Cd issue in the mid-90's.

What we have here is a power trio that was so common from the Cream/JH Experience days, where the guitar plays the main role, but Cross also handling whatever KB parts present on the album. Drummer Dunton (no slouch at his instrument either) handles also the vocals (which are nothing out of the ordinary) and bassist Jinks provides a solid base to work upon. Needless to say that with the perpetrators being so young, this disc is not perfect and sometimes-downright naïve, but the results are truly impressive for novices such as them.

Opening track is a sizzling guitar-dominated lenghty hard-driven 100MPH track with great riffs (early Frank Marino style) and wild drumming underlining the semi improvised solos. The second track JLT is actually a showcase for Cross's keyboard works, he has quite a palette of them at hand and again, the results are surprisingly good. But the real highlight is No More White Horses - a track that was covered (and completely rekindled T2's legend) by Landberk in their first album (English version) - is close to being a masterpiece of its genre and it alone being worth the price of the Cd re-issue and is ending in total chaos.

Side 2 is made of one sidelong track, Morning, starting out as an acoustic, but slowly evolving into a frenzied hard rock track somewhere between Budgie, Wishbone Ash and Cressida. There are some lengths in this epic and it is overstaying its welcome just a tad, but this is a minor remark.

If you are now in your fourties and discovered this some 10-12 years ago, you should find this a rather good album, but nothing worth yelling over the rooftops its merits. If you are younger, chances are that your natural enthusiasm will make you love this beyond what normal wisdom should allow, and if you are contemplating investigating the album, beware of its rather overdone reputation. A good solid small gem, maybe but hardly a cornerstone either.