Neal Morse - Sola Scriptura
Inside Out

file under prog / sympho metal

Evil Dr. Smith: Neal Morse is back in the Church Of Holy Music, and we all praise our Holy Father Morse: Hosanna in excelsis! Even agnostics, non-believers and atheists must confess: for a religious man he sure knows how to play music. For instance, this album starts with an explosive, thunderous overture of progrock violence. Holy mama… what a power, what a riff-o-rama, what an exhilarating, almost diabolic start! It’s almost a pity that after five minutes of inflammable “instrumetal” Neal starts to sing. Almost.

This fourth solo album on Inside Out of Neal is once again played together with octopus Mike Portnoy on drums and Randy George on bass. The special guest this time is guitar hero Paul Gilbert (ex-Racer X, Mr. Big) and maybe it’s because of Paul that this is Neal’s hardest album. The guitar duels between Paul and Neal sometimes lean against pure hard rock. The album contains only four songs, but after the first two extremely long epics (‘The Door’ and ‘The Conflict’) we’re already almost one hour further. Together with the short ‘Heaven In My Heart’ and the closing hymn ‘The Conclusion’ the album takes more than 75 minutes of your time anyway.

After three excellent solo albums with extremely short titles, ‘Testimony’, ’One’ en ’?’, Neal wants to do it the Latin way. ‘Sola Scriptura’ (“by scripture alone”) is the assertion that the Bible as God's written word is self-authenticating, clear (perspicuous) to the rational reader, its own interpreter and sufficient of itself to be the only source of Christian doctrine. It was also a foundational doctrinal principle of the Protestant Reformation held by the reformer Martin Luther. And the album’s theme is build around the life of this Martin Luther, an influential German monk from the sixteenth century. Some moments on the CD contain a religious, gospel-like atmosphere, but the balance between power, religion, melody and damn good writing skills are so superb that every secular listener can’t be bothered by the enlightened path Neal’s walking.

Evil Dr. Smith diagnoses: 87/100 (details)

http://www.nealmorse.com

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Neal Morse - So Many Roads (3-CD (DIGIPAK))

€ 16.99