Jubilee Offer: Patriotic Classics for £2.50 |
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Customer Reviews
The songs themselves are quite excellent, tightly structured, highly melodic and full of power, but showcasing subtly detailed arrangements. The band has never sounded so confident and impress as a complete, integrated performing unit. Arena are now reaping the benefits of working with a settled line-up at last.
Musically, this is Arena's most powerful album. The guitars of John Mitchell are much to the fore on this, with Clive Nolan's keyboards adding the necessary symphonic colourings, especially on the closing 13 minute "Opera Fanatica". Here, swirling synths evoke a mad, carnivalesque atmosphere, just the right mood needed for this epic piece.
I like Rob Sowden's voice, which always reminds me of Peter Hammill and is quite refreshing. Not the usual vocal histrionics normally associated with heavy rock music. It has a deep, theatrical edge to it which is quite distinctive and especially suits the material here. It would have been so easy to make everything sound overwrought, but Rob just adds that right amount of drama to the proceedings without making it all sound too over the top.
It's difficult to pick highlights as the quality of the songwriting and performances are consistently high throughout. The closer "Opera Fanatica" stands out because of it's length and the use of the operatic opening leading to a heavy rock assault is quite effective. My particular favourite is "Purgatory Road" which has an excellent chorus and superbly rousing finale and the opening "Bedlam Fayre". "The Eyes of Lara Moon" may owe a small debt to the film "Eyes of Laura Mars" and contains a gorgeous Hackettesque guitar solo from Mitchell .
The cartoon strip format of the cover and booklet is entertaining. The artwork for this is attributed to Tim Bisley. A nom de plume I suspect as the name was a character from the Channel 4 series "Spaced" who was also a cartoonist. In any event, the artwork is exquisite and good fun, though the limited size of the CD booklet format somewhat limits the overall effectiveness of the cartoon strip.
Though Arena are often tagged as a neo-prog outfit, whatever that means nowadays, on this evidence they are out on their own, producing a distinctive heavy symphonic rock. This is an excellent way to start the year and has already garnered high praise from many quarters. Even though this is only January, this should be on many peoples end of year best of lists.
Funnily enough, this album reminded me of Pallas only with better musicianship and ideas. I think it is the keyboard style of Clive Nolan that does it.
I was an old-time Pendragon fan (I saw them first at Queen Mary College, London in about... hmm maybe 1983 or 84, and I own one of the very early cassete demo tapes from before they had a record deal) but I prefer Arena now because I don't have to listen to Nick Barratt's limited vocal talents!
Thumbs up from a new and very happy Arena fan.
Oh one last thing, can you please enclose a magnifying glass with the CD booklet? My aging eyes have trouble reading text THAT small :) This album would have been perfect as a record, with a proper 12" sleeve - it would then have ranked alongside Thick as a Brick (original newspaper version), Yessongs, Olias of Sunhillow and The Pentatuch of the Cosmogony as one of the all-time great album packages!
I put it hoping to hear a couple of good tracks but was astounded to find after a couple... Read more
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
