Monday 8 January 2018

Monarch Trail - Sand (2017)


The second album from this Canadian band.

Monarch Trail is a trio with a lineup of bass, drums, guitars, keyboards and vocals.
Three guest musicians is providing guitars.

This is also the band project of Ken Baird, an artist in his own right. He set up Monarch Trail to get an outlet for his desire to play in a band.

I reviewed their first album Skye for # 1 of this blog and really liked it a lot. It is a great album. You can read my review here.

Monarch Trail plays symphonic neo-prog. References are Genesis, Marillion, Pendragon, IQ and Spock's Beard.

There are six rather short songs here and the very long title-track which is clocking in at twenty-five minutes. An epic symphonic prog track in other words.

There is some pomp and bombastic prog here inbetween some more pastoral prog. The sound is OK but not great. There is parts of this album which is really great. Other parts are merely good.

The keyboards runs are very good though and ditto for the guitar harmonies.

I like this album a lot as it is pretty much playing on my heart strings. But I still think most of you will also like this album. I rate it as a very good album.

3.5 points


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