Pangaea is a band from the USA who released three studio albums in the nineties. Namely The Rite Of Passage (1997), Welcome To The Theatre... (1998) and A Time & A Place (2002). All reissued lately! But also albums which were all produced by the well known Robert Berry, who became part of the band as well. Unfortunately, the group would go on a hiatus for a rather long time after those releases. To be honest nobody would have given a dime and would expect them to return to the progressive rock scene. But never say never and guess what? The five members got back together in 2021 and rehearsed for the first time in eighteen years. And now with all members 22 years older after their latest album came out, a follow up has been released. Titled Beowulf. With the aforementioned Berry again behind the recording panels. Thirty years after the formation of the band. You might think when Andi Schenck (drums, percussion, keyboards, backing vocals), Corey Schenck (keyboards, guitars, backing vocals), Steven Osborn (lean and backing vocals, guitars), Ron Poulsen (bass, backing vocals) and Darrell Masingale (lead and backing vocals, lead guitar) having turned many years older they might have forgotten how to write decent progressive rock tunes. But that's fortunately not the case. They are not like a band such as Yes, that nowadays completely lost the sense of how to come up with great progressive rock albums as they did in the seventies. A fox may lose its fur but not its cunning as they say in the Netherlands. Meaning that you might get older but you still have the skills to do things the way you did before. However the music on Beowulf is rather different compared to the songs which you can find on their back catalogue. Which does not mean less good. But the more neo prog sound of the nineties is almost completely gone and makes way for a sound which moves more towards the musical style which is more typical for bands from the USA. Progressive rock mixed with influences taken from rock, folk and AOR. Take for example album opener Necromancer, which harkens back to the days when Kansas and Styx were big names in the scene. Even a small organ part reminded me of the early days of Genesis. A great album opener if I may say so. Great sing-along tunes are next with Show Me The Way and Masquerade. But music wise still rather strong with great harmony vocals. With follow-up Wasape it seems the band goes back to the Native Americans. Just as they did earlier with The White Shaman. Which can be found on Welcome To The Theatre... their second album. With tribal rhythms and the vocal parts largely sung and spoken in what I think is the Indian language. With Tomorrow Will Come the band goes back to the Western sounding progressive rock style. Again strong vocals mixed with strong instrumental parts. A song which was also released as a single. But I don't think it will hit the charts even though it has some catchy musical parts. Without You almost ends the album. A great mellow piece of music mainly performed on the piano and organ. Again with strong vocal and guitar parts. A Month Of Sundays finally really ends the album. Only too bad it is only 2 minutes long. It starts as a kind of song which you hear not really clear on an old radio before it gets into a normal sound. And it also sounds like a demo recording made in the studio. You hear mainly a singer who is accompanied on the guitar with fireworks and bells in the background. Finally the beautiful art work has to be mentioned as well. This was done by Rainer Kalwitz in a perfect way. Just like we want on a true progressive rock album. That's what Beowulf is by all means. Even if the influences from other musical genres are present it will certainly be loved by anybody out there who calls himself a true proghead. The only negative remark I can come up with is the total time of music available. Maybe it is a bit strange that you come up with only forty minutes of music if you have been away twenty years from the progressive rock scene. Maybe they saved some songs for another album in 2025. Well the answer to it is that they were going to release a vinyl edition of the album. And vinyl only holds 22 minutes of music per side before you lose sound quality. And yes a new album, titled The Reckoning, will be released in May 2025. So thats something to look out for. And if possible a bit of the nineties music might be included as well. Thanks in advance! Welcome back Pangaea! **** Henri Strik (edited by Tracy van Os van den Abeelen) Where to buy? |
