Those of you who checked out our interview with Kansas’ Rich
\nWilliams on our sister site, Power Chords, heard the eyepatched
\nprogressive guitar maven talk about a new band he liked called
\nUnder The Sun. Needless to say, when Da Boss said that he had the
\nCD and I could review it, I jumped at the chance.<\/p>\n
After three listens, I came to only two conclusions: one, I
\nreally<\/i> liked it, and two, it was going to be damned hard to
\nquantify or describe. It’s easy to call a band progressive rock;
\nbut within that spectrum you can get everything from Gentle Giant
\nto Savatage. Under The Sun is a little bit of both.<\/p>\n
Having played together for ten years in Southern California (and
\nwhat is it about California and prog lately? Between Spock’s Beard
\nand UTS, there’s a lot of good things happening), UTS has a unique
\nsound. Rush comes to mind in the insistent guitar of Chris Shryack
\nand the bass lines of Kurt Barabas; occasional moments of Kansas
\npop up in the keyboards of Matt Evidon; and Shryack can do an eerie
\necho of “Bark At The Moon”-era Ozzy.<\/p>\n
Don’t let the namedropping fool you, however. UTS has its own
\ndistinctive blend of sound, alternately stark and serene, rich with
\nthe band’s eponymous spirituality yet still stinging with impact
\nand edge. Let’s call it “damned good” and leave it at that.<\/p>\n
\nUnder The Sun<\/i> is jam-packed with wonderful, wonderful songs.
\nFrom the opening wide-screen grandeur of “This Golden Voyage” to
\nthe metal-tinged “Seeing Eye God” to the ominous mini-saga “The
\nTime Being”, there isn’t a bad track to be found.<\/p>\n
Special note, however, should be made of a few tracks. “Tracer”
\nis reminiscent of Rush’s
\nPermanent Waves<\/i> CD, tight and clear lyrically with several
\nneat twists of phrase. “Breakwater” is a bright, martial tune that
\nshould somehow get a special award for gratuitous bagpipes. The
\nlyric poem “Perfect World” is disturbing and bitter, a dark
\ncounterpoint to the soft, transcendent close “From Henceforth Now
\nAnd Forever”.<\/p>\n
\nUnder The Sun<\/i> is refreshing, talented, reminiscent of the
\nbest of progressive rock without ever being derivative, and
\ndefinitely worth your time and money. Kudos to Magna Carta Records
\nfor continuing to bring us these great, great discs. This one moves
\nstraight to my Top Ten list for the year, and if you like
\nprogressive rock, it’ll be on yours, too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":25539,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[6405],"rating":[5646],"class_list":["post-36745","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-under-the-sun","rating-rating-a"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/36745","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36745"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/36745\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25539"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36745"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=36745"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=36745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}