Yeah yeah, I know.
Being a huge Styx fanboy growing up, my voyage away from the band was in the 90s as I was getting so much more into progressive rock and jazz. Since Edge of the Century, there really isn't much that I cared for coming out of the Styx world (and even that album was a bit of a stretch). There last few attempts at studio albums were nothing impressive to these ears. However, admittedly I was so immersed in so much other music, it would have had to been extremely impressive to gain my attention.
So here we are many years later and Styx puts out what, on paper, sounds pretty laughable - a 40 minute concept album about a mission to Mars. That's quite ambitious for a group that you'd expect should be singing about Social Security and the AARP. Anyway, to say the least I was skeptical. I was even more skeptical when the Styx thread was posted here a few months back with the music video for "Gone, Gone, Gone". The music was okay, but the video seemed a more rocking chair than rock 'n' roll.
But I did buy the album based on the solid reviews. I must say that I was shocked at how much it began to stick with me after the 2nd spin. They really did come through. There's a lot of very memorable tracks on the album, and they did strikingly capture the essence of the band's classic 70s sound in many places. While there are a lot of moments on the album that are high points, my personal favorite track is "Red Storm", which captures everything that was great about the band on those classic A&M albums from 40 years ago. I should also mention that it was produced and recorded very well.
Anyway, I'm sold and more than pleasantly surprised. Many similar projects from groups like this do not work out well. Don't get me wrong, as much as I love the result, the concept is still rather amusing. The liner notes explain the story better, but it doesn't make it any less campy to me.
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