CD Review  

The Reasoning
 "Awakening"

Rating 90%

reviewed by John Morley

 The Reasoning are a band formed by one-time Magenta bass player Matthew Cohen, and though there are some progressive influences present the emphasis is primarily on contemporary rock songs, alternating between shorter, melodic, catchy tracks and occasional longer, epic material. The addition of former Karnataka vocalist Rachel Jones as a full time member has added another appealing dimension to the bands overall sound.

With Rachel Jones now on board you now have a very powerful, dynamic vocal line-up with Rachel's exquisite voice, second guitarist Dylan Thompson's rockier tones and keyboard player Gareth Jones smoother, higher range. This means that you have three more than capable singers all able to sing lead or contribute vocal harmonies to add some very interesting vocal interplay to the songs.

Title track Awakening is probably the proggiest track on the album, opening with an extended synth intro but soon transforming into a driving, rhythmic rocker that gets the album off to a great start.

The impressive triumvirate of Chasing Rainbows, Playing The Game and Aching Hunger showcase the more melodic, shorter song based aspect of the band very well - Dylan's expressive vocal on Aching Hunger and Chasing Rainbows really gets inside your head.

Sacred Shape slows things down a little, with Rachel's wailing, siren-like vocals giving way to an intense, compelling and evocative experience.

Fallen Angels brings the tempo back up, a powerful rocker that grabs the attention with some distorted synth notes and with a very catchy chorus, a song that I'm sure is going to become a live favourite.

Shadows Of The Mind (with a haunting opening violin solo from Blue Horses Liz Prendergast) and Within Cold Glass, featuring none other than Marillion's Steve Rothery, bring the album to an impressive end - in fact I felt like Within Cold Glass could have gone on a little longer, seemed to end just as it gets interesting.

Having listened to the album for a while now, what impresses me is that the band have the confidence in their material to let the compositions and lyrics come to the fore, and don't feel the need to throw in solo's or long instrumental passages just for the sake of it. Another strength is being able to alternate between the shorter, more melodic songs and the longer, epic ones with ease, and yet without that feeling you occasionally get when a band does that in the sense that they cannot decide what direction they want to go - you can only achieve that successfully if you have a clear vision and confidence in the abilities of your band and in the material.

Awakening if by no means a perfect album, there are some good songs and some very good songs. But on the basis of this the future for The Reasoning is very bright indeed.

Work is well underway on second album, Dark Angel, material from which is already being played live and sounds very promising indeed.