Night Castle is an ambitious project, undertaken on a grand scale. Part novella, part bilingual rock opera, it’s a tale of unlikely heroes, courage, love, sacrifice and redemption, and the capacity for both good and evil that resides in all of us, weaving electrified themes from Mozart, Grieg and Bach into original orchestral and rock songs.
Unfortunately, these originals are a fairly derivative sonic mélange of Queen’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ without the wit, combined with the most pretentious aspects of Yes, the Electric Light Orchestra, and Andrew Lloyd Webber. Without the accompanying booklet there would be no coherent story to integrate the songs, and the prose style is an awkward blend of children’s story-book writing and gritty Viet Nam war story that sorts very oddly with the pomp and bombast of the music.
It feels unkind to be critical of any work that so many people have worked on so hard and so earnestly. A quick count of personnel yields a total of close to a hundred men and women who have put some genuinely skilled labour into this project — including some guest bass work by Greg Lake. But alas, a combination of earnest intentions, skilled musicianship and a high-minded theme are not enough to produce art. The concept is noble; the execution lacks the touches of subtlety and delicacy that would be necessary to turn this concept into something more than sound and fury.
(Atlantic, 2009)
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