Threshold - Legends Of The Shires album review

Six months on there’s still no reason for Damian Wilson’s removal from Threshold, beyond his desire to be “involved as an equal in the band”. So once again the UK’s premier prog-metallers return to another ex-frontman. Last heard on ’94’s Psychedelicatessen, Glynn Morgan does a better than average job. At more than 80 minutes long, Legends… is a complex, conceptually themed double-disc monster that ups the progressive ante. From the taut, fist-in-the-air might of Small Dark Lines and Snowblind to The Man Who Saw Through Time’s 11 and a half minutes of multi-tempoed lusciousness and hard-pop masterpiece Stars And Satellites, its diversity and ingenuity does them credit. Legends… is the band’s most ambitious work thus far, but one wonders how much better it might have been with Damian at the mic.