Trollheart

Album Title: X
Artist: Spock's Beard
Nationality: American
Year: 2010
Subgenre: Neo-Prog
Player(s): Nick D'Virgilio (Drums & Lead Vocals), Alan Morse (Guitars, Backing Vocals), Ryo Okumoto (Keyboards), Dave Meros (Bass, Additional Backing Instrumentation)
Familiarity: Have heard some of their material but find it hard to make it through a full album. Slowly getting there.
Favourite track(s): “The edge of the in-between”
Why? I like the idea of a really good opener, and though this is something of an epic it really keeps my interest from beginning to end. I like the digs at reality shows (“See the girls line at the gate, they're gathering for a chance in the big machine”) and the instrumentation is flawless.
Least favourite track(s): "Emperor's New Clothes"
Why? It's just stupid and Nick trying to sing like a 70s rocker is a bit silly. Mind you, it was a choice between this and “Their names escape me”, which is equally annoying.
Any preconceptions prior to listening, whether good or bad?
I kind of hoped this would be the album to finally decide me on SB but so far I'm still kind of on the fence with them.
Factoids you'd like to share? Um, their name is based on the Star Trek episode “Mirror mirror”, in which Spock, well, had a beard! Oh, and it's their tenth album, as if you couldn't guess...
End impression: A decent album that has almost a 50/50 between great and poor tracks, but has not yet managed to convince me these guys are worth listening to for any great length of time.
Comments: Nobody doing comments any more guys? This is actually our second outing with Spock's Beard in this club, our previous being in the former incarnation when we looked at “The Light”. I wasn't terribly impressed with it then, and I can't say I'm overly so here either, though I did enjoy the album. As I said above I've been finding it hard to get into Spock's Beard. The first albums I heard from them were on a playlist rotation with other tracks and I used to skip them, almost going as far as to delete their material off my player, but then I heard “Flow” and I liked it. Since then I've given them a chance but I find their music, for me, is quite hit and miss, and it's the same here. Some great tracks, some really bad ones. I've also somehow always thought of them as an English band, dunno why: they just don't sound American to me.

As usual there are the epics but surprisingly they're what save this album for me. Opener “Edge of the in-between” is excellent and the closer “Jaws of Heaven” almost tied for best track with that. The ones that annoy me are detailed above and it's just that they're too whimsical. Come on guys: this is not 1973! You can't get away with that sort of thing these days. Musicianship has never been in doubt but some of the subject matter for the songs is downright awful, as touched on by Anteater already. I would have preferred to have seen a ballad on this album though, as they do those quite well.
Rating: I'll give it a 4.0 on the basis of the epics as I think it probably deserves it, though I may be being a little generous here.

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018