First up, I found the name “Best Prog Rock Album in the World... Ever” to be a bit over the top and as pretentious and brash as it sounds. Just ignore the title as it would be aimed more at the casual prog listener rather than the prog aficionado.

As a compilation the track listing is quite eclectic and interesting when looking over the 3CD set, with a little bit offered from many prog genres. I found it handy to take down to the radio station to play the odd epic and other prog tracks while not having to take a mass of CD’s. The epic tracks presented here are ‘Valentyne Suite’ by Colosseum, ‘Mumps’ by Hatfield & The North and ‘A Plague Of Lighthouse Keepers’ by VdGG. It is also good to see Deep Purple’s ‘Child In Time’ in the mix as this is a bit of a progressive offering from the heavy rock giant.

On the downside the set does however suffer from having a few too many compilation ‘specials’ … I am thinking of tracks like ‘Joybringer’, ‘Back Street Luv’, ‘Silver Machine’ and the excerpt from ‘Tubular Bells Part 1’ that seem to be in every second prog compilation.

And as you would expect with just 3CD’s there are a lot of groups not represented, which I imagine is as much to do with the access Virgin had to bands as anything else.

All up, if looking for a reasonable compilation with some diversity I can recommend this … as long as you can pick it up for a song. And for a rating I am giving it 3 stars.

by T.Rox


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