Quite Box Tricks

The fourth studio album from the contemporary prog rock supergroup picks right up where 2009's well-received Whirlwind left off. Beginning with the mammoth, meaty, and majestic "Into the Blue: Overture (Instrumental)/The Dreamer and the Healer/A New Beginning/Written in Your Heart/The Dreamer and the Healer (Reprise)," which allows each member the space with which to flex his considerable creative muscles…

It’s not easy being a heritage act like FM. Your fans want a nostalgia hit but they also want new releases. You’re trapped. You may want to move on, but you don’t dare go too far. Despite lacking the international successes of Def Leppard or - to a lesser degree - Thunder, FM remain one of the UK’s best-loved melodic hard rock bands and their new record is an impressive balancing act between that rock and that hard place. They might just be the one band on the scene that can manage to please nearly all of the people… nearly all of the time…

Ten Years After was a British blues-rock quartet consisting of Alvin Lee (born December 19, 1944, died March 6, 2013), guitar and vocals; Chick Churchill (born January 2, 1949), keyboards; Leo Lyons (born November 30, 1944) bass; and Ric Lee (born October 20, 1945), drums. The group was formed in 1967 and signed to Decca in England…

Slade may have never truly caught on with American audiences (often narrow-mindedly deemed "too British-sounding"), but the group became a sensation in their homeland with their anthemic brand of glam rock in the early '70s, as they scored a staggering 11 Top Five hits in a four-year span from 1971 to 1974 (five of which topped the charts)…