British progressive rockers Threshold have decided to treat their fans to another helping of high-quality musical material. This time, nearly an hour of magnificent music awaits us, touching upon celestial themes. The album was originally planned to be named after one of its best compositions — "Pilot In The Sky Of Dreams," which in my view quite accurately reflects both the thematic content and the overall atmosphere of the album. However, they ultimately settled on "Dead Reckoning," reflecting the album's second characteristic — a certain gloom from unfulfilled dreams. Notably, none other than Dan Swano — multi-instrumentalist and true Stakhanovite of the musical workshop — came to assist Karl Groom (founder, producer, composer, and guitarist) in creating this album. The projects he is involved in are too numerous to count, yet in the context of the Threshold collaboration, his progressive brainchild Nightingale comes to mind. And although Dan's participation is credited only as guest vocals on "Slipstream" and "Elusive" (his growling, by the way, fits the atmosphere of the compositions brilliantly), I suspect his contribution went beyond that. The compositions on the disc are entirely written by Karl Groom and Richard West (keyboards). Their stylistic range varies from dark progressive to almost upbeat rock-and-roll. Andrew McDermott's vocals are very diverse and compete quite admirably with the musical tapestries in terms of the complexity of transitions. All in all — another magical disc from one of the leaders of the global progressive scene. Essential listening.
