Short Reviews [Pangaea - 1997 - "The Rite of Passage"]

In 1995 the band Artica comprised Andi Schenck (drums & percussion), Corey Schenck (keyboards, guitars & backing vocals), Darrell Masingale (vocals & lead guitar) and Ron Poulsen (bass guitar & backing vocals). They worked with Robert Berry at his Soundtek Studios and released ‘Liquid Placidity’, which I must confess to having never come across. Undeterred by the success they changed their name to Pangaea, and over the next few years released three albums under that name, all recorded with Robert and then disappeared. Until now. Not only is there a new album but they have remastered the others and refreshed the artwork, which is why, only 27 years after its debut release, I am now playing ‘The Rites of Passage’. Back in the 90’s the most popular (in a relative sense, prog wasn’t really popular at all and the mass media were doing their best to keep it that way) form of progressive rock was neo prog, but the styles coming out from the two sides of the Atlantic were very different indeed with the Americans often coming to it from their style of melodic rock and such is the case here. While the likes of Iluvatar and Timothy Pure managed to make their presence felt in Europe, I missed out on this album at the time and confess that from the beginning to the end I played this with a massive smile on my face. This is very much an album of its time with nice vocals, great hooks, and that neo-prog knack of having a strong rhythm section combining with a guitar and keyboard attack. That this sounds quite dated is of little surprise, given that this style of prog really only flourished for a certain period of time (and is often looked down on by many progheads even though many popular bands have released albums in this vein such as Pendragon, Galahad, IQ, Marillion and many more), but this takes me back to when the underground prog scene really was that and the only way to know what was going on was to read fanzines and go to gigs as the internet did not exist and glossy colour mainstream mags like ‘Prog’ were a fantasy. Hearing this now I am somewhat surprised it did not have more impact at the time, especially with the involvement of Robert Berry who always gets the most out of bands and can provide whatever instrumental or production support is required. But they obviously made someone sit up and take notice as the next album would be released by Angular Records in Germany.