Lee Abraham-The Seasons Turn (2016)

“The Seasons Turn” is a magnificent work created by Lee Abraham, a musician experienced in progressive rock thanks to his work with the band Galahad and his five previous solo albums. With this sixth album, Lee Abraham composed a repertoire of just five songs, some of them quite lengthy, which, while not exactly groundbreaking, offer pure, high-quality symphonic rock. For this endeavor, the multi-instrumentalist enlisted a wide array of collaborators, including Marc Atkinson (vocals), Martin Oxford (flute), Gerald Mulligan (drums), Christopher Harrison (guitar), and Rob Arnold (keyboards), among half a dozen other musicians. Starting an album with a mammoth 25-minute title track is not only a huge gamble, but also a bold move, and Abrahams pulls it off brilliantly, transforming it into a truly progressive structure brimming with diverse sounds, expansive layers of Mellotron, vigorous electric and acoustic guitars, overflowing emotion, and a sense of epic grandeur. Following this overwhelming adventure come "Live For Today", "Harbour Lights", and "Say Your Name Aloud", shorter pieces with a heavier, more direct tone, culminating in the musical extravaganza of the album's other suite, "The Unknown", another epic song with neo-progressive undertones, where harsh guitars and a vast arsenal of grandiose keyboards take center stage. Without a doubt, we are witnessing one of the finest works of modern progressive rock in the 21st century.