If not for Opeth's leap of faith into the chasm of noodly prog rock I would never have found this little album. I remember the moment of discovery quite vividly. I was spinning Heritage thinking, "where are the hooks?!" while surfing the message boards of metalreview.com. Scrolling through the ever present Now Playing thread, the cover for this popped up and I knew exactly what it was before reading a single word of the post itself. The cover is unmistakably prog rock, the sort of prog rock about temptation, damnation, death, in a very biblical context. Upon the first spin of this I knew that there was no need to ever pull out Heritage again. This example of vintage prog rock has hooks, so many hooks, glorious memorable hooks, the sort that grow like vines around the part of the brain where songs get trapped and repeated endlessly.
The most fascinating thing about this album though is how historically accurate it feels. If handed The Tree of Life without the knowledge that it was written this year, I would have guessed it was some recently discovered relic of the late 70's. The production has the warmth of a purely analog signal, the guitar tone has a perfect gain structure that has just the slightest amount of break-up, and this vintage feel makes the prominent proggy organ feel right at home. The finished product is really impressive, really catchy, really beautiful, and it proves that really good prog rock isn't dead yet.
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