3 out of 5 Stars!

The instrumental portions of this album are wonderful. The singer, however, is pretty much wretched, hence my lower amount of stars. So buyer beware. Thankfully the singer doesn’t insert himself throughout every track, so those prog-rock lovers who have an enormously tolerant attitude may not care too much. Normally, I am tolerant if the vocals in question are either quirky or purposefully off-the-wall (Marillion, Ange, PFM, Zappa, et al). But in this case, the extremely dramatic vibrato and “HEY, I’M IN YOUR FACE, SO NOTICE ME, DAMN IT” forceful delivery of the vocals are nothing but annoying.

Musically speaking, on the other hand, this is a fine album, often amusing, stimulating, and brilliant, but I’m sorry I couldn’t rate it higher than a 3-Star average rating due to the aforementioned “annoyance” with the vocalist.

Now…I can’t help wondering if the band produced only a single album due to this glaring “vocalist flaw.” Hmm….