For
Trojan,
the Vow has polished its act music-wise. Singer Holger Goetz hits emotional strings more often, coming through somewhere between
Pallas' Alan Reed and
IQ's Peter Nicholls. The programmed drums are mixed warmer, and the arrangements have been enriched and diversified. It remains very generic neo-prog, simple and too sweet, relying on series of hook-laden melodies mounted over medium tempos. It would be an evolution all for the best though if it weren't for the lyrics.
Trojan is a concept album about a video-game knight on a quest. Each song describes a part of his journey, a level. Goetz's words stick closer to a game walkthrough than anything poetic. The lyrics are filled with words like "level" and "area"; they don't even try to disguise themselves as something more metaphorical. Would the idea of singing a walkthrough ever occur to you? It did to Goetz and he sings it as if it were a love poem or had some drama in it. The problem is that no dramatic tension ever builds up, the descriptive phrasing (and some serious grammatical problems) being unsuitable. The story itself picks up every cliché of the fantasy game: the magic crystal, the potion, the wiseman, the dragon, the castle, the demon. If you can shut the lyrics out of your mind, you will end up with a decent chunk of neo-prog, close to
Pallas or early
Pendragon. If you can. ~ François Couture