I just picked up Spock's Beard's X album, and I'm really diggin it.
X is truly a great masterpiece! Every song is at least good, while many are 5-star pieces! It was hard for me to believe they could move forward and make an album that would equal or top it, but they did with BNADS!
A few days back, I received the Neal-era albums I didn't own in the mail. I've got to say, I am loving Beware Of Darkness. I also have a bigger appreciation for "Afterthoughts" now that I know where it came from. Loved "Thoughts" so much that I immediately listened to part 2 before continuing on with the album. Went and listened to Neal's part 5 as well. All fantastic songs. When I have time I'm hoping to give Kindness of Strangers, Day For Night, and V a proper listen. And get around to the second disc of Snow. I listened to the first disc when I bought it some weeks back and couldn't really get into it.
Only one I'm missing from the studio albums now is the self-titled.
Glad to hear you're enjoying BOD. It's one of my favorite SB albums, and it's quite a good collection of various songs in different, I guess, styles. It's very YES-like in terms of variety. You have the transformed cover song, a vocal-exercise (and Gentle Giant-inspired) song, the well-known epic, a soothing acoustic guitar solo, another rousing epic, a rocking pop-like short piece, and the really long closing epic! BOD had a good balance of new-era Prog with tinges of Yes, Genesis, Gentle Giant, and many more, while still sounding unique and cohesive.
I have a playlist on my phone of "Thoughts", "Thoughts (Part 2)", "Afterthoughts", and "Thoughts (Part 5)" - it's fun to listen to all four back-to-back! I hope SB makes "Thoughts (Part 4)" sometime soon!
If you love BOD, I'm hoping you'll love TKOS - they're similar yet different. Well, only similar in that they're both 7 songs, there are 3 epics, and it's Spock's Beard. Otherwise, the songs can be quite a bit different, but I've always felt BOD and TKOS were sister albums.
And I'll forgive you for not immediately loving
Snow - concept albums, especially double ones, can be a bit tough to get in to at first, but after a couple years of listening to it, it became my favorite, and it has been for the last 7-8 years now. I must have listened to
Snow at least a thousand times by now, and it NEVER gets old for me!
-Marc.