This isn't that bad. I mean it's nowhere near as good as their previous three albums but I would say these songs aren't any more bloated and directionless than The Gates of Delirium and Awaken which people love.
It insists upon itself
proof that not all pretentious wankery is fast
Tales from Topographic Oceans [Atlantic, 1974]Nice "passages" here, as they say, but what flatulent quasisymphonies--the whole is definitely less than the sum of its parts, and some of the parts are pretty negligible. I mean, howcum they didn't choose to echo Graeco-Roman, Hebrew, and African culture as well as the lost Indian, Chinese, Central American, and Atlantean ones? Typical hyperromantic exoticism is one answer, and everybody would know they're full of shit is the other. C
