Thursday, March 27, 2008

Album of the Day

Dark Matter, by IQ (2004): IQ had a career that initially paralleled fellow neo-proggers Marillion, first helping to establish the genre then trying to break out to a broader rock audience. They both lost their original vocalist along the way. Neither band made it stick. Where Marillion kept the new singer and forged an evolving sound that slowly moved away from the neo paradigm, IQ got the old singer back and retreated to the neo style they new best. In the years since Pete Nichols returned to the band, IQ have refined and tweaked a basic sound into a finely polished item. As a result, they're at the top of the neo heap by this point. To a certain extent, they've been stuck in a bit of a rut, but they inhabit it awfully well.

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