By: Anders

Posted: Mar 20, 2006

It's no secret that I through the last couple of years have become a real sucker for progressive rock, a style many consider weird and mostly about showing off skills. Even though it in many coincidences can seem like that it's all about, many albums open up after a few intense spins, and reveal the great songs lying beneath the technical and progressive approach. The musicians within this genre are often very good and talented at their instruments, though many of them are also excellent songwriters. Before I threw this new album with The Tangent in the player, I only knew the band by name, though that was about to change.

Greatly orchestrated pieces of progressive rock is what we get throughout the whole of this album, an album that runs for 70 minutes, and even though that sounds like a long album, when its done playing, you'll immediately press play again, as the time feels like flying away when listening to the music. The compositions are incredible catchy, together with being very progressive and technical-superb. The song writing is aced, there is a red thread throughout the songs, you never get lost, there are good musical-hooks, though also excellent vocal-hooks. The vocals from Sam Baine, Guy Manning and mainman Andy Tilison are all amazing, one more or less telling a story, while the others are smooth and creamy as lukewarm butter, the combination is magnificent and keeps ones attention locked on to the music and story going on.

Musically there isn't a thing to complain about either, all the performances are excellent and flawless. We have all from guitar, bass, drums to saxophone, moog, clarinet and mandolin, amazing, especially the clarinet works rally well when it is used, damn it sounds smooth and good. The production of the album is amazingly organic, warm and smothering, though the many layers are still mixed very well, so we never have any instruments drowning each other out, they are all placed very well compared to each other, and they all have a lot of space to move around on, and even though the band uses many instruments and there are a lot of things going on at once, once in a while, it never seems crowded, it does just flow naturally out of the speakers, really good work!

This album has blown me away, and so far it stands as the ultimate progressive rock release this year, even though we aren't that far into the year yet. The overall musical experience when listening to "A Place In The Queue" is amazing, and it is hard to get enough of the album, it just screams for a spin more! The superb blend of smooth hard rock, progressive elements, great technical performances and organic jazz are mind-blowing, and puts the listener into another world, than this one! This is how to do a progressive rock album, a magnum opus of this genre!

Rating: 10/10

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