Yes - Topographic Drama – Live Across America album review

More than a tribute band

Cover art for Yes - Topographic Drama – Live Across America album

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With all the absentees, it’s easy these days to view Yes as being no more than a glorified tribute band. But leave that preconception aside, because the current line-up do a sterling job in commemorating two Yes albums here.

There are six tracks from 1980’s Drama. Often overlooked, the band highlight the strengths of songs like Machine Messiah and Run Through The Light. It’s intriguing to hear vocalist Jon Davison’s striking delivery – it has much in common with Jon Anderson.

There are also three selections across 1973’s Tales From Topographic Oceans, which work competently enough, albeit sounding a little hesitant at times. Add in four immortal Yes classics and you have a more than decent nostalgic whirl.

Malcolm Dome

Malcolm Dome had an illustrious and celebrated career which stretched back to working for Record Mirror magazine in the late 70s and Metal Fury in the early 80s before joining Kerrang! at its launch in 1981. His first book, Encyclopedia Metallica, published in 1981, may have been the inspiration for the name of a certain band formed that same year. Dome is also credited with inventing the term "thrash metal" while writing about the Anthrax song Metal Thrashing Mad in 1984. With the launch of Classic Rock magazine in 1998 he became involved with that title, sister magazine Metal Hammer, and was a contributor to Prog magazine since its inception in 2009. He died in 2021