Classic Rock Bottom

by "RJ...it's great to be able to post the eventual Album of the Year...hog"

The Neal Morse Band - The Similitude of a Dream

Album One:

1. City Of Destruction

2. The Ways Of A Fool

3. Breath Of Angels

Album Two:

4. Shortcut To Salvation

5. Freedom Song

6. Confrontation

PS......This is a must buy!

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A few seismic shifts have happened in my musical life this past year...  1)  My tastes have turned bluesier, 2) disturbingly heavier and 3) proggier...

Why seismic?  I've always thought that I was drawn to the more melodic AOR side of life, and don't get me wrong, I still am, but for me right now, that new Metallica is stuck on replay and the one thing I've also been doing is revisiting the 2016 purchases I've made, guess what's floating near the cream of the crop...  Megadeth, Dead Daisies, Scorpion Child and thanks to Jon that new Blackfoot is quite good as well.  And now the Stones release something that sounds extremely promising to me as well...

All that said, the two prog releases that I love as well are this and Kansas' Prelude Implicit.  Its looking like a far better year for new releases than I recall, but that may be because things changed for me as well...

Also, I want to acknowledge Niels and his call on this one.  After the Grand Experiment I had resigned myself to hearing a part II of that and when I seen the price of the album it was discouraging enough for me to ignore it, until it started getting more endorsements.

Album of the year?  Not for me, at least not yet...  But a definite top ten release and must buy indeed!

I feared, that Morse was over his Creative peak, since he hadn't released anything remotely as great as Testimony 2...since T2 (even though the first 3 songs on the last album were very, very good), but low and behold, he STILL has it...or THEY have it, because this is very much a group-effort. I'm VERY impressed by the vocals on this album, and I'm not talking about Morse himself, well not only Morse.. But all muscianship is awesome on the album!! I can't think of another 106+ min-album, where times goes by as fast as it does, listening to the album, and there really isn't a bad track on the whole album. This is very much "Testimony part 3", and the melodi that is played quite a few times on the album is soooo much a "Testimony-tune". I don't know if this album turns out to be better than T2, but what's better now, is the fact, that NMB is a BAND, and a great one. No guest-musicians like Steve Morse, and no bonus-tracks, which would probably had been too much, even though 2 of the bonus-tracks on T2 are 2 of my favorite Morse-songs. I don't know, how the songs sounds, stading alone, an I don't really care, because this is very much a double Concept-Prog-album, and it should be heard as such, just like Tommy, Quadrophenia...and T2. 

It's one of those, for me, rare albums, that sounds awesome the first time, but still you can hear, that there's so much to discover, that it will take you many listenings, until you really know the album. It's not secret, that my second favorite-album of the year, is by Haken, but that album didn't sound that good at first. It took a few listenings, until I could hear how good it was. My experience tells me, that when an album sounds awesome at first, and awesome a month later, and still fresh, like I have no intention of "leaving it alone" for...I don't know how long; it's a true classic album, that will still be a classic the years to come.

It really puts a thick line under the fact, that my two favorite "artists" for the last couple of years are Neal Morse and Steve Wilson. Of the 5 best albums relased since the year 2000, they have made 4 of them, and this is one of them.

IF I should say a few "negative" things, it would be, that Morse ARE reusing ideas from earlier on, and some of the melodi-lines are used quite a few times through the album, so at times it feels like one big song, like Tull's Thick As A Brick, but all the great things about this album, delete those "negative" stuff.

Man, I'm looking forward to the concert April first 2017!!

10/10

The Neal Morse Band--Thumbs in the middle

There's really nothing new here? It sounds like other Neal Morse albums so it's getting a bit old. The last NM album I liked was Sola Scriptura and since then it's just the same ole, same ole. It's not bad. but nothing reaches out and grabs me. The first couple of songs sounded like something from European goth rock/prog bands without the orchestra and female singing. Those songs would probably sound good in a Broadway play. Also sounds like one of those Frontiers albums which sometimes have the tendency to sound alike even though they're from different artists. Oh, well. More money saved.  

I really, really like this album.  

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