CD/DVD Releases: 3RDegree Releases New Studio Album ''Narrow-Caster''
New Jersey prog band 3RDegree's new CD Narrow-Caster (their first studio album since 1996's Human Interest Story) is released today. The 10-song CD (or download) was started just over 2 years ago when the band reformed after a long hiatus. It is a mix of songs, some started at the end of the quartet's first tenure and some fresh compositions upon the band's restart. The collection is a real tour-de-force through the different types of songs 3RDegree have shown capable of pulling off: from the intense odd-timing of "Apophenia" - a song about humanities' tendency to look for patterns and meaning in the seemingly meaningless - to the pastoral, gentle delivery of "Scenery" - a grand addition to the band's canon of melodic and accessible songs with long multi-part lead ups to great pay-off choruses. Sandwiched in between is "Cautionary Tale," taking on the subject of militant religiosity in all its forms and in a musical delivery no less intense than the subject deserves, "Young Once" with its synthesized, other-worldly respite-an oasis on the way to the album ending "The Last Gasp," which features full orchestration along side the band calling out "sing on!" until the band and orchestra break down in an almost exhausted fashion.
[Source: Robert Pashman, 3RDegree]