With the apparent resurgence of progressive rock these days,
\nthere seems to be a natural outgrowth of the genre to include
\nelements of popular music into the rich arrangements. Attempts are
\nmade at writing shorter songs with catchy riffs and choruses. And
\nwhile this is a nice change of pace, it’s going to be some time
\nbefore such a shift feels natural.<\/p>\n
For Houston, Texas-based Pangaea, you can hear some of the
\nprogress in their music. And while their second full-length disc
\nWelcome To The Theatre…<\/i> showcases some of this progress,
\nit also shows the weaknesses of both band and genre alike.<\/p>\n
There are many moments on this disc that show the promise and
\npotential of Pangaea. Vocalist\/guitarist Darrell Masingale is at
\nhis finest on tracks like “The White Shaman,” featuring a solid,
\nNative American-influenced rhythm from drummer Andi Schenck. The
\nwhole band (including keyboardist Corey Schenck and bassist Ron
\nPoulsen) demonstrates their talent on “Fanfare For One World,” an
\ninstrumental track that tips its hat to Emerson, Lake & Palmer
\nwithout ripping them off.<\/p>\n
Pangaea’s rock influences are clearly heard on tracks like “Dark
\nRoom” and “Ride It Easy”, but occasionally their lyrics try to turn
\ncerebral but end up a tad banal, such as on “The Hobo, The Dog, And
\nThe Moon” (even though the song itself is a decent number with a
\ncatchy riff). Other times, this lyrical shift works, as evidenced
\non their criticism of society today on “The Fall Of Rome”.<\/p>\n
The experiments in pure progressive rock are the weaker moments
\non
\nWelcome To The Theatre…<\/i>. The basic song on the second half
\nof “Crimson” is a decent track, but it takes too long to develop
\nthe basic track with the prelude “Lover”. And the spoken-lyric
\ntrack “The Nightmare,” while an interesting concept (the lyrics are
\na palindrome – that is, they read the same forwards or backwards),
\nis not executed well at all. Masingale would have been better off
\nnot reciting the lyrics on this one; it tends to make the track
\nthat much weaker.<\/p>\n
Sound-wise, Pangaea seems to rely far too much on the keyboard
\nwork of Corey Schenck. While his work is good, I wouldn’t mind
\nhearing more guitar and bass farther up in the mix to create a more
\npleasing blend to the ears. (Famed progressive rock producer Robert
\nBerry might have had a hand in this as well.) The only other
\nweakness with
\nWelcome To The Theatre…<\/i> is it’s not the easiest album to
\nget into. Overall, I think I gave this disc five listens in the two
\ndays prior to writing this review before things finally started to
\nclick for me. Admittedly, progressive rock is much more challenging
\nfor a listener, but it shouldn’t be this difficult to get into an
\nalbum. The first two times I tried listening to this disc, I found
\nmyself tuning out before four tracks had passed – not the most
\noptimistic sign.<\/p>\n
\nWelcome To The Theatre…<\/i> does show Pangaea as a band that
\nwill be a name to watch in the coming years, but they still have
\nsome homework to catch up on. If you’ve got the time and energy to
\napply to this one, it will prove to be a somewhat worthwhile
\njourney.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27774,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[7478],"rating":[5614],"class_list":["post-39157","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-pangaea","rating-rating-c-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/39157","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\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39157"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/39157\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27774"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39157"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=39157"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=39157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}