2004-12-26
For over a decade now, Neal Morse has been one of the greatest fromtmans in the current progrock scene, along with his home band Spock’s Beard, he was considered to be one the most creative minds in the genre as he has proved with his different projects and albums.
Somewhere in the year 2000 he claimed to have a vision, where god told him to leave his band and dedicate his life to god, since that period of time he has become a Christian , and from all of those emotions his autobiographic album Testimony was born back in 2003
In that album he shared his own personal life story, and now, almost two years later, he tells us the story of all humanity, from its first days, when god and men were united, their separation and at last, their reunion into perfect harmony, man and god together again, from genesis to revelation.
This time, Neal ( which is known as a great multi instrumentalist) is joined but the ultimate drum machine Mike Portnoy and his Testimony Tour bass player Randy George as part of the writing team.
They’ve helped writing all the bits down ,and arrange them, all this makes this album become much more a project of the wonderful three then being a solo album.
In my opinion, this album is much more musically complex then the previous one, also much more varied, in oppose to Neal's first two solo album which were much more Pop like, this time it’s all prog, it is even notice able with the concept and the songs length (two 18 min pieces, 12 minuets, 9,5, 2 min)
the album reflects all of Neal musical styles that we’ve learned to love on his various projects.
It has his “classical” strings arrangements, that symbolizes gods presence (as we’ve learnt in his last album), the musical transmission that worked so great for transatlantic now do the same great effect and feeling on this album, and the great vibes and Acapella parts like in Spock’s beards good old days.
And it’s all wrapped in 79 minuets great energetic music.
Adding portnoy to the writing staff give Neals music a new aspect and gets his music to the boundaries of progmetal, and his arrangement skills has definitely affected the albums texture.
Neal's vocals has never sounded better and varied, but it’s noticeable that this story isn’t his own personal story, and the album is less heart moving, but it gets the story across to the fans, and it lacks the emotional vocals that ruled his last album, but it works great for this story, because it gives you the freedom to find yourself in the story, and not try to search for his life story, I think it’s all for the best.
The songs that personally caught my attention were Author of Confusion, That is the perfect combination between all the musical wonders that appear on the album, the creation, and the man, are both great epics and the amazing grand finale, Reunion.
The whole album is amazing, catchy, exciting, energetic and makes you wanna be part of this great creation.
Roy Povarchik
