Jeff Wayne's 1978 musical version of H.G. Wells' "The War of the Worlds" isn't a classic, but it contains some really good music and should appeal to fans of progressive rock and the Moody Blues. The songs and instrumentals are interwoven with a narration by Richard Burton, and the singers include the Moodies' Justin Hayward (his two songs charted as singles in the U.K., with "Forever Autumn" hitting #5), Thin Lizzy's Phil Lynott, and David Essex. There's good guitar work in the instrumentals "Horsell Common and the Heat Ray" and "The Artilleryman and the Fighting Machine", and "Artilleryman" includes an insanely catchy synthesizer theme. Wayne throws in the character of the narrator's fiancee for no reason whatsoever -- except that he had co-written a fantastic lost-love song called "Forever Autumn" and it was so good that he needed to find a way to work it into the album. The song here has Burton's narration in the middle of it; if you're looking for the original single mix, you'll need to go to a Moody Blues greatest hits album to find it. The album's biggest downside is that its second half is much weaker than the first; the songs aren't as good, are too long, and have hammy vocal performances. Much of the album sounds dated today, especially the disco beats on "The Eve of the War" and "Artilleryman". Depicting the Martian fighting machines by having someone sing "Ooooo-laaaa" was intended to sound eerie, but comes off as sort of goofy. This is a 3-1/2 star album: good enough that I can get songs from it stuck in my head for days, but at the same time I sometimes go years without having the urge to listen to it.
(1=poor 2=mediocre 3=pretty good 4=very good 5=phenomenal)
Jeff Wayne's 1978 musical version of H. G. Wells' "The War of the Worlds" isn't a classic, but it contains some really good music and should appeal to fans of progressive rock and the Moody Blues. The songs and instrumentals are interwoven with a narration by Richard Burton, and the singers include the Moodies' Justin Hayward (his two songs charted as singles in the U. K., with "Forever Autumn" hitting #5), Thin Lizzy's Phil Lynott, and David Essex. There's good guitar work in the instrumentals "Horsell Common and the Heat Ray" and "The Artilleryman and the Fighting Machine", and "Artilleryman" includes an insanely catchy synthesizer theme. Wayne throws in the character of the narrator's fiancee for no reason whatsoever -- except that he had co-written a fantastic lost-love song called "Forever Autumn" and it was so good that he needed to find a way to work it into the album. The song here has Burton's narration in the middle of it; if you're looking for the original single mix, you'll need to go to a Moody Blues greatest hits album to find it. The album's biggest downside is that its second half is much weaker than the first; the songs aren't as good, are too long, and have hammy vocal performances. Much of the album sounds dated today, especially the disco beats on "The Eve of the War" and "Artilleryman". Depicting the Martian fighting machines by having someone sing "Ooooo-laaaa" was intended to sound eerie, but comes off as sort of goofy. This is a 3-1/2 star album: good enough that I can get songs from it stuck in my head for days, but at the same time I sometimes go years without having the urge to listen to it. (1=poor 2=mediocre 3=pretty good 4=very good 5=phenomenal)