Prolusion.
Writer and reviewer Kev Rowland will of course be a familiar name for anyone who reads the Progressor website, and increasingly also a well known name also for people with less of a close relation to the progressive rock scene due to his series of books featuring music reviews. Among artists and labels he has of course been known as a capacity for more than 30 years, one of the true veterans among reviewers of progressive rock. This year he released his fourth book of progressive rock reviews.
Analysis.
How to review a review is a challenging task in itself, and how to review a book of them even more so. Trying to do so in an unbiased manner when the author writes for the same website as yourself and is by now a good friend even more challenging, and that I have written the actual Foreword of the book in question will probably make my review one that many will regard as perhaps not quite credible and perhaps not even worthwhile. But hey, at least I am open about all those facts, and that should count for something.
As the bias factor has been dealt with, the book itself is perhaps a bit easier to describe, as going into the reviews themselves, the content of the book, isn't something I will do. This book is a collection of reviews, stated facts and opinions about a number of releases, as well as a few interviews. Those who like reading reviews will have a lot to enjoy here, more than 300 pages of them, all covering music that explores the confines of progressive rock and progressive metal to a lesser or greater degree. How informative and useful each and every review will be is something that will be different from one reader to the next: Like with music, the written word will also be a matter of subjective taste and opinion. Some like the mother and some like the daughter as the saying goes. What I am fairly certain about is that just about everyone with an interest in the fields of music covered will encounter reviews by artists they are aware of and know about to some degree, and that absolutely everyone will encounter reviews of artists they will never have heard about until reading the review in this book. This obviously says something about the scope of this book too: There are reviews of household names in the scene just as much as artists that never managed to become known outside of a small circle of music journalists. With the greater number of artists covered most likely existing somewhere in the sphere between these two extremes.
This isn't the kind of book you sit down with and read through from start to finish in one go, at least not unless you have a very deep interest in the field of music reviews. It is a book you will pick up and read a bit in now and then though, a compendium to use if you feel the need to find new artists to explore, and possibly a book to have handy near the porcelain throne for reading there instead of another book or a magazine.
The reviews in this book were written in the years 2008 to 2013, and while much of the music obviously will be from that specific time period, there will be quite a few instances of music released prior to 2008 being reviewed as well. Which perhaps is a small fact not too many will think about when reading the time period covered by this book.
Conclusion.
Those with a passionate interest in progressive rock and progressive metal who also enjoy reading reviews about music in this field will have another fine book to pick up with "The Progressive Underground Vol. 4". More than 300 pages of text and hundreds of titles reviewed makes this quite a journey of discovery where everyone will find something to discover and many will be reminded of albums forgotten. As with the other three volumes in this series of books this is a most solid tome indeed.
Olav "Progmessor" Björnsen, July 2022
Links:
https://www.gonzopublishers.com/kev-rowland
https://www.gonzopublishers.com/
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