siLLy puPPy After three albums of what many consider neo-prog paradise, PENDRAGON shocked their fans after the release of “Not Of This World” with the 2005 followup BELIEVE. Gone were the saturated layers of synthesizers that crafted unthinkably dense atmospheres and major key exercises in happy songs that delivered crisp melodic constructs that were taken through subtle variations that climaxed in rock fueled upbeat tempos. For whatever reason many of the better known neo-prog acts underwent a metamorphosis in the early 2000s with some flirting with full-fledged progressive metal and others just taking their signature sounds to ever increasing complexities.

While PENDRAGON would wait until the next album “Pure” to ratchet up the metal qualities, BELIEVE took a completely different turn from what the fanbase was used to. While Clive Nolan was taming his keyboard passions, lead vocalist and guitarist Nick Barrett was rockin’ his acoustic skills. This album focuses primarily on the guitar unlike any previous PENDRAGON album where the synthesizers have always dominated and then some. Starting with a beautiful acoustic guitar title track that begins the album more like a folk album rather than neo-prog. The guitar oriented songs continue for awhile with only Nick Barrett’s vocal style simulating the neo-prog singing style of previous works.

Yeah the album still starts out with some Floydian production tricks and maintains that space rock pace throughout much of the album but this time around the space part is often left behind for more serious rockin’ out with more attention to varying aspects of the guitar rather than the typical Steve Hackett guitar sweeps or the David GIlmor twang-a-thon. The space rock and traditional neo-prog sounds though are fairly well integrated into this new approach which makes this quite recognizable as a PENDRAGON release despite the radical new shift in the band’s direction and perspective as the lyrics have become more sombre, melancholic and downright conspiratorial.

The album in many ways almost sounds like a completely different band until the 21-minute suite “The Wishing Well” kicks in and then it offers some moments of business as usual albeit with subdued synthesizer sounds in the background and acoustic guitars never out of range. The electric guitar parts are more prominent and in addition to the dreamy sweeps of classical neo-prog, they also invoke the dirtier bluesy rock styles of classic rock. The album also took on a noticeably darker sound as the dreamy tapestries of yore had suddenly become a bit more gloomy. While this is still basically neo-prog at its core it’s not exactly depressive black metal but for PENDRAGON a different style indeed.

The gist of the album is to usher in melodic hooks through the folky guitar strumming with Nick Barrett narrating his usual poetic prose however the songs tend to stick to the rock paradigm rather than get too wrapped up in the atmospheric dominance that excelled on “Not Of This World.” The album is also noticeably shorter than previous offerings with a mere 51 1/2 minutes of playing time. It seems very succinct in comparison. PENDRAGON goes through its usual shtick of nurturing a melodic hook and then crafting myriad variations to keep the musical flow humming along in that regard they do quite a decent job even though this was new territory for them.

The album has a more intimate feel to it as it’s not smothered in layers of keyboards and focuses on a more stripped down approach. Despite a change in direction the basic formula of starting slowly and ratcheting up the tension to a thundering crescendo and then a soft coming down moment is still intact. The production is damn near perfect as usual and Barrett’s acoustic guitar tones are phenomenal. Overall the album sounds really great and i actually like the direction they took the new sound even if most fans don’t. The album seemed to boost the band’s confidence and far as rockin’ out because next time around they would unleash their inner metalheads and merge the once metal-free neo-prog zone with the more feisty guitar heft of the metal universe. Perhaps not as perfect as what came before but to my ears an experiment that worked out quite well and one i love to play from time to time.

Warthur Pendragon's Believe is a transitional album, and suffers from most of the problems transitional albums tend to suffer from. The band are captured in the process of moving on from the Floydian neo-prog style which had sustained them from The World to Not of This World, and whilst it is refreshing to hear them experiment, at the same time they don't seem to have conclusively hit on a new direction, which has meant that the album took a while to grow on me.

That said, it's refreshing to see a band experimenting with their sound to this extent two decades into their career, at a point when if Pendragon had continued in the same general sound they'd had from The World to Not Of This World they could have probably reliably kept the loyalty of a faithful fanbase indefinitely.

There's a greater emphasis this time on Nick Barrett's guitar playing, and an attempt by Nick to play in more varied styles than just wailing Gilmouresque solo after wailing Gilmouresque solo, and the band cast a wide net in terms of the sounds they are working with. Sometimes they seem to be edging towards indie rock, at points you get a sort of Clannad direction going, other times things get a little folky. (It feels, in fact, like at points the band are taking on influences from their fellow Marquee veterans Solstice.)

On the whole, it's an interesting experiment and there's many pleasurable songs and sections on here, but the album's highly varied sound means that it feels less cohesive than the albums which preceded or followed it. In addition, given that Nick's lead vocals are such a big component, it's worth noting that around this time he started getting big into David Icke, and worked some of his themes into the lyrics here; it's a little subtle at points, but once you know he's on the Icke train it kind of jumps out at you. I've never considered Nick's vocals to be a strong suit of Pendragon - but it's one thing to hear an OK-but-not-great singer singing meaningless nonsense or personal love songs, another to hear them singing about weird conspiracy theories.