Thursday, December 11, 2014

Opus - Up And Down Review






My overall impression after listening to the first 4 tracks is that this band is a mix between Alan Parson's Project, Journey, and Yes.  This is a live album that came out in 1984 or 1985 (there are two copyrights on the back.  Live is Life is the radio song / pop song on the album as the sticker on the front denotes.  The song is kind of a mediocre "audience high"song kind of like Closer To The Heart by Rush.  Nice to get that song out of the way right out of the gate since the rest of the first side gets better as it goes along.  More percussion and synthesizers are slowly introduced with each song building towards the second side of the album to be epic maybe?  Unfortunately not.  It stays flat on side 2 and almost gets worse.  It is kind of 80's Reo Speedwagon style on side 2.  So, you have about 5 out of 10 tracks that are decent and worth listening to.  A plus is that this is a completely live album but it doesn't sound like it.  The production quality is excellent.  It unfortunately doesn't say where or when this album was recorded live. Not a bad album overall and definitely worth giving a listen to.  Something different but not really.