Got through Circle of Stones today, and here's a brief snippet of my thoughts on my single run-through of it (I'll add spoilers since we're technically in pre-release) :
Overall, it's pretty much what I expected--a solid Blaze album with very little in the way of surprises. I replied to a question earlier in this thread or another one when it was asked if people were more excited for Bruce's or Blaze's solo album. I responded with Bruce's, because already both songs from TMP have been a bit out of left field as far as my expectations were concerned. With Blaze's longstanding collaboration with Absolva, we've come to know what to expect: solid albums, but with few surprises. Sometimes they knock it out of the park, like with Endure and Survive, and sometimes we end up with just a good album like its follow-up, The Redemption of William Black. To my ears, Circle of Stone leans more toward the latter.
It definitely does have its standout tracks, like the title track and "The Year Beyond This Year" are great. It's sort of strange in the sense that the first half of the album has songs with no connecting theme, while the latter half has a weird ancestor thing going on with its theme. That latter half does try some newish things, like a bagpipe instrumental leading into the final five songs, and the return of some female vocals to harmonize with Blaze on the last song, "Until We Meet Again," which is a nice closer.
Anyway, I'm certainly not bagging on the album. Like I said, it's solid Blaze. The production sounds better than we typically get from this era, and, as has been mentioned since the video came out, the trend of auto-tuning Blaze a bit here and there that started with War Within Me is back. Personally, I don't find it to be a big deal, but others might. I guess I just came away from the album feeling like we've seen everything that's in the Absolva lineup's bag of tricks songwriting-wise, and this feels like a small step down from War Within Me, which was a pretty great album, IMO. That said, Circle of Stones is good, I'm glad I bought it and Blaze fans should like it, but it stays very much inside that comfy box where this lineup's sound has established itself.
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