Author: Peter Podbrežnik
Artist: Saga
Label: SPV Records
Release: 1997
Rating: 1/5
You could sum up the music on this album in a single sentence: lots of pain, zero joy. One look at the hideous, utterly banal cover of “Pleasure And The Pain” is enough to kill your urge to listen, which would honestly be a blessing, since the music is even worse than the artwork. Very few prog rock bands have taken a quality nosedive as steep as the one Saga pulled off here. But how is that possible, or better yet, how did it happen? Is this really the same Canadian art rock band that put out art rock classics like “Images At Twilight” (1979), “Silent Knight” (1980) and “Worlds Apart” (1981) at the turn of the 70s and 80s, and just a year before this deeply sad train wreck released the excellent concept album “Generation 13” (1995), which set the template for the sound of their later records too? What on earth was going on in the heads of the Saga guys when they marked the band’s 20th anniversary by recording by far the worst thing in their history, something unworthy of their name? It’s pointless to guess.
Experimenting with different musical elements was always in their blood, and mostly it paid off, but this time they hit nothing but a creative rock bottom, next to which even “Steel Umbrellas” (1994), until then considered their weakest album, is a flat-out masterpiece. Here they completely betrayed their progressive rock side, descended into total banality and cooked up a tasteless mix of electronic techno beats, loads of robotic samples, industrial metal and a few rare, barely detectable classic Saga elements. The sound is deliberately, hopelessly muddy, as if they were trying to sound as grimy as possible for industrial metal. So the whole thing sounds like it was recorded in some neighbor’s garage. Worst of all, this isn’t a deliberate self-parody, a fan club EP or horror movie music, but a regular Saga album.
Given this controversial about-face, it’s no wonder that original longtime drummer Steve Negus (replaced here by Glen Sobel (Impellitteri)) chose to jump the leaking ship once again (he came back later, once things cleared up) rather than get his hands dirty playing music that’s beneath musicians of Saga’s caliber. Like Hercules in the ancient myth, who had to muck out the Augean stables, Saga started shoveling the musical muck that was popular at the time, and ended up badly smearing their reputation and coming across almost like a band mocking its own longtime followers. How else were the latter supposed to explain a band putting out such a criminally bad record right after one of their best? Apparently the Crichton brothers on guitar and bass, singer Michael Sadler and keyboardist Jim Gilmour told themselves that, with the big anniversary and “Steel Umbrellas” behind them, they could afford another wacky experiment to show how “broad” they were, so they set about injecting techno elements and the then-very-popular industrial metal into rock. If this were some space rock outfit like Hawkwind, you could turn a blind eye and chalk it up to a rare moment of total creative apathy and a need for quick cash from ravers who wander in front of the rock shelf by mistake. But this is an art rock band, one you expect anything from except the worst kind of tripping, so it’s deeply sad and painful that they dared to record something like this, and a seriously needless waste of talent.
As a whole the album is miles below par, but I’ll still point out its best moments (really, only two are worth a mention), which are as rare as four-leaf clovers in a field. The opening, hard-to-categorize experiment “Heaven Can Wait” definitely counts as listenable, a sort of mix of power metal, grunge and recognizable Saga elements (spicy, bouncy guitar riffs, mighty vocals and solid keyboard textures). The chorus sits somewhere on the border between power metal (guitar riff and vocals) and grunge (rhythm line). It sounds nothing like their usual sound and is far from the standard Saga level, yet it’s probably still the most decent track on the album (along with the closer). From there on, though, the album is pretty much downhill all the way. “How Do You Feel?” is almost pure industrial metal in the vein of Nine Inch Nails, and it gives me a headache every time I hear it. “Welcome To The Zoo” is another weird misfit, somewhere between industrial metal and second-rate Britpop, with no shortage of obnoxious electronic samples, excessive distortion and a vocal run through a decompressing effect. “Where’s My Money” is easily the most repulsive thing in their entire career – pure techno with revolting electronic samples, a monotonous drum machine, pointless guitar distortion and the most obnoxious multi-voice chorus (a sample, of course) anyone could possibly have come up with, reminiscent of the chanting of some drunken idiots in the middle of a football match. I haven’t heard anything that bad from a prog/art rock band either before or for a long time after. Sadly, it really was made by legendary art rockers and not some generic cookie-cutter band with the same name. Just when the barf bucket is already filled to the brim, the nasty surprises still aren’t over.
How pathetic and out of ideas they’d become here is shown by the fact that they put two cover songs on an album for the first time in their history, which is rarely a good sign of creativity unless it’s some bonus track that doesn’t make the regular album. The first is a dismal, industrial metal version of their own classic “You’re Not Alone” (originally from “Images At Twilight”, 1979), which insults the memories and feelings of everyone who has followed the band since the beginning. The second is a very tasteless cover of the Beatles classic “The Taxman”, which, drowned in a flood of industrial and electronic samples, sounds like it’s been dunked in mud. Black-and-white proof of how sad things must be when you record your own cover for a studio album, and on top of that one that smears the original’s good name. “You Were Made For Me” is another perfect industrial metal shot into the void, one that not even good guitar riffs and decent drums can save. “Gonna Give It To Ya” once again has a pure techno beat, while Ian’s decent guitar solos, solid keyboards and Michael’s vocals just don’t belong with it. Without those dreadful techno samples it would have been a perfectly decent Saga song, but by trying to sound modern, or “in”, they totally wreck it.
“Fantasticaly Wrong” is yet another complete catastrophe, the one that finally made the barf bucket explode. It’s a monotonous industrial metal mishmash with no rhyme or reason that never goes anywhere. Jim Gilmour tried to experiment widely with electronic samples, but all it did was hurt the band. It may sound like a bit of a banal observation, but the only decent parts of the album are the first and last tracks. The closing “Pleasure And The Pain”, with Gilmour on vocals, is a decent, even slightly Celtic-flavored acoustic ballad, backed simply by the Crichton brothers’ two acoustic guitars, and it clashes sharply with the whole mood of the album. Still, it can’t undo the damage the previous tracks did to my auditory receptors.
Every time I listen to “Pleasure And The Pain” I’m one step away from stomach cramps, and sitting through the album from start to finish is already something of an art form. Luckily, Saga realized in time how deep into the mud this miserable techno/industrial metal experimenting had dragged them, and understood that the crucial moment of their career had come: either a final breakup or a rebirth. The latter happened, and on the albums that followed, to the relief of all their fans, Saga returned to their classic style, restored their former glory and even made some of their strongest records. With them they eventually managed to fully redeem themselves for this unfortunate slip-up, which quickly faded from the collective memory of the band and its followers, but will surely be remembered as their by far worst album.
Lineup
Michael Sadler – vocals
Ian Crichton – guitar
Jim Crichton – bass guitar
Jim Gilmour – keyboards, backing vocals, vocals (10)
Glen Sobel – drums
Production
Jim Crichton
Track list
1. Heaven Can Wait (6:13)
2. How Do You Feel (4:05)
3. Welcome To The Zoo (4:28)
4. Where’s My Money (5:17)
5. You’re Not Alone ’97 (4:17)
6. Tax Man (3:35)
7. You Were Made For Me (3:44)
8. Gonna Give It To Ya (3:56)
9. Fantastically Wrong (5:47)
10. Pleasure And The Pain (2:35)
Running time: 43:57
