Back to the
reviewpage
Ajalon - On the threshold of eternityAlready four years ago I heard Ajalon for the first time, but not until now, after many delays, their long awaited full length album sees the daylight. Ajalon is the brainchild of the maestro Randy George (bass player in the Neal Morse band) and the album “On the threshold of eternity” he shows that he, like his friend Neal Morse, can handle most of the instruments. We also get some sweet guest appearances here, first of all the king of Keyboards; Rick Wakeman! He does some wonderful solos on a couple of tracks (“What kind of Love“ and “Forever I am”). Add to that Phil Keaggy and Neal Morse himself and we quickly understand that this album could very well be a major hit.The music can be described as symphonic progressive rock, with the roots in the classical 70’s bands like Kansas, Genesis and some Yes. Actually the singer (Will Henderson) reminds me a lot of Steve Walsh of Kansas, even though Will’s voice lacks little strength and he’s not as sharp as Steve, but then who is? The music is filled with good melodies and the songs have been worked on a lot, many times it’s like taking a journey to the unknown, not knowing what will appear after the next corner. The intelligent song structure is something that really spices the songs up a lot; they seem to grow with every listen. About the songs, we get a mixed pot. The song “The promised land” is right up there among the best progressive songs I’ve heard this year; atmospheric and melodic with Mr. Will’s melancholic voice, makes this real masterpiece. Also the sing-along friendly “Sword of Goliath” is top notch stuff, so is also the very catchy “What kind of Love”, the sensitive and soft “The highway” and the giant epic “On the threshold of eternity”, where Will is doing a duet with Neal Morse. The strange thing about that duet is that Will actually is the supreme of these two great singers here. The negative thing here is that we also get some less good songs. The pop influenced “Holy Spirit Fire” is plainly awful and so is “Pslam 61”, the others are OK, but I have slight feeling that the lads could have provided the goods all the way, if they wanted to! This is not quite as good as Neal Morse’ works but it’s a very close call! |
|
| Style: Progressive Rock | |
Overall:
|
|
| Year: 2005 | |
| Review by: Victory | |
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||