Flying Colors
Third Degree

To prog or not to prog? A Hamlet-like doubt that plagues us when faced with a myriad of bands. With Flying Colors, the question must have arisen for everyone. Someone might say, "Who cares about the genre...?!" but for music critics, questioning the genre is an integral part of the game, of the critical activity! The prog bible, Progarchives, welcomes them into its library, but in the "Prog Related" section, a separate section dedicated to those bands that have been influenced by the genre in some way but are never really considered exponents, like Iron Maiden, Metallica, Muse, and Queen. However, in various forums, Facebook pages, magazines, and columns dedicated to progressive music, Flying Colors are regularly treated like any band in the prog cauldron. Listening to the first two albums, my idea is of a band influenced by the genre but not truly a prog band, more oriented towards classic rock, with shades of pop-rock, hard rock, and blues rock, with tracks mostly oriented towards the song format but not hesitating to include long intros, long solos, significant instrumental passages, even indulging in long and elaborate tracks; in a sense, Progarchives is right; let's say it’s more or less the same discourse that can be applied to historic bands like Styx and Supertramp; lately, I've discovered that I have a certain fondness for these kinds of bands, precisely for their being on the edge, wanting to pose as a prog band but not being one, creating an aura of mystery around their name.

However, this third album significantly changes the perception of the band's approach. We can state without problems that "Third Degree" is a more markedly progressive album. Already when the tracklist was made known, accompanied by the track lengths, it was clear what direction the band wanted to take. 5 out of the 9 tracks exceed 7 minutes, numbers that certainly represent a clear signal; it's noteworthy that what lengthens these tracks is not a simple particularly long solo or a slightly over-the-top intro, unlike what happened in tracks like "Blue Ocean" or "Peaceful Harbor," here the goal seems to be to go beyond the song form and create more complex tracks. Consider tracks like "More" and "Guardian"; the first surprises the listener with its technological and futuristic sound quite unusual for the band, highlighted also by its particular video that sees the band in a neon-redskin version of itself: if the first half is rather catchy and direct, you subsequently witness significant changes in rhythm and dialogues between guitar and keyboard that cannot help but be framed in the prog genre, immediately followed by a significant slow part, initially very delicate and then more intense, followed by a very technological and daring keyboard solo; the second seems to have a more or less similar structure, more or less immediate in the first part marked by robust bass lines before taking a completely different turn, initially a slow part with a long guitar solo accompanied by an intense organ and subtle vocal choruses, then an instrumental foray with a long and furious bass solo with fusion connotations. "Cadence" seems more delicate and composed, more oriented towards a symphonic and elegant rock but doesn’t shy away from including some extra guitar solo, moreover Portnoy tries to make the rhythm of a relatively calm track more tense and varied by inserting some surprises, even attempting to deceive the listener by hinting at a faster and more lively part pretending to drag them into a more unleashed section that then doesn’t arrive.

However, the foray into purer and freer form prog-rock occurs in the two longest compositions, lasting over 10 minutes; "Last Train Home," initially slow, strikes for its sparkling central acoustic section, with bursts of guitars, strings, and scat vocals that recall a tribal and wild folk, providing one of the most interesting moments of the entire album; "Crawl" is closest to '70s prog, with piano passages, organs, and mellotron that recall Genesis (at times it seems like "Firth of Fifth"), with the only flaw of being somewhat dispersive.

The fear is that in becoming more prog, Flying Colors might end up becoming a copy of Transatlantic, but the class and uniqueness of each member ensure that this prog is reworked intelligently, combining the unmistakable touch of each.

However, despite the prog surge, the band does not seem to really want to become prog, wanting to maintain a light rock band approach; even if the three 7-minute tracks have a very rock-oriented first part, the album also contains 4 less lengthy and explicitly more direct tracks that, at least for the moment, prevent a true prog turn. The opener "The Loss Inside" is, for example, a hard rock bomb where Steve Morse's guitar and Neal Morse's massive organ race at full throttle, but there’s also room for slower verses, steeped in soul and blues marked by the bass and Casey McPherson's intense voice. "Geronimo" offers an unusual funk-blues where with metallic licks bassist Dave LaRue once again takes center stage. "You Are Not Alone" is a ballad that crescendos, drawing from brit-pop and soul, reaffirming the more pop and light spirit of Flying Colors, in any case, emphasized by "Love Letter," a cheerful '60s hippie tune that sticks in your head and doesn't leave, perfectly achieving its objective of being pop while maintaining decency.

Summing up, I would say that initially, I would have signed for Flying Colors to continue with an approach with fewer prog elements (roughly that of the previous album); perhaps this was a turn to embark on later, but when faced with reality, I have to say, as a lover of more or less any kind of turn, that I greatly enjoyed hearing them in this more progressive guise, "Third Degree" paradoxically contributes to making it even more mysterious and difficult to label this supergroup which this time is truly balanced between one approach and another. And then when you have a combo of musicians of their caliber, class is assured. The risk of a Transatlantic 2.0 for the moment is averted, but now, precisely, the great return of Transatlantic is eagerly awaited (recordings for the fifth album seem to be well underway).