IQ : EVER

1. The Darkerst Hour
2. Fading Senses: I After All / II Fading Senses
3. Out of Nowhere
4. Further Away
5. Leap of Faith
6. Came Down

Label : Giant Electric Pea

Time : 50:27

Release Year : 1994

Review (Amazon) : The comeback album of all time. IQ are reunited with their original vocalist, Peter Nicholls, to produce a masterpiece far beyond all expectations. Don't be misled by the petty categorising and go beyond the genre stereotyped asumptions. This album is far more than a progressive / neoprogressive / art-rock / whatever album and stuns with just superb music. Check this one out, a must for all music fans. After one album with record company Giant Polygram IQ were dropped and went on hiatus for a few years. Eventually the band got back together with original vocalist Peter Nichols and added bass player John Jowitt for this release. "Ever" is one of the band's best. They sound like a band with something to prove and everything about this album is classic IQ. The songs are all great, "The Darkest Hour", "Fading Senses", "Out Of Nowhere", "Further Away", "Leap Of Faith", and "Came Down" rank up with the best of IQ. The band has never sounded better, and Peter Nichols continues is vocal improvement. There is not much negative I can say about this one. If you like IQ or are into good neo prog this album is essential. IQ are supposed to be "neo progressive". Which means that they do "simpler" prog rock. Musically and lirically, "Ever" couldn't be considered "simple". All the formal (melodic, harmonic, rhytmic) development and complexities from the genre are present here, and not just for the sake of being clever or hard-to-listen. There's real emotion in every track. Some moments are real classics. I just couldn't think of a better way of opening an album than the opening in "The Darkest Hour". And then you get gems like "Leap of Faith", with the Cinema Show-like structure (beautiful song, then a brilliant guitar-keyboard interplay section, with each instrument replaying and adding to every melodic line that the other has just exposed, without really being a counterpoint, it's rather a dialogue than a canon or chorus), and "Further Away": IMO the best composition IQ has ever crafted. Many people regard "The last human gateway" (the obligatory twenty minutes suite for every prog band) as the best, but "Further Away" is dense in good ideas, concise (yes, you can be concise in a 14 minutes piece of music, if you have a lot to say and play), emotionally intense, never a cliche. Enough said. If you are into prog, and do not have this one, GET IT. If you dismiss neo prog as a [sick] or sold-out form of prog, do yourself a favor and get it. Or, simply, if you like music that takes some risks, and if you want to LISTEN to music, and discover something new with every listen, instead of just putting the CD in and let it play in the background... Get it !